Futuristic The Deep Dark: A Space-Age, Intergalactic Freeroam RP

[Cry U 945]

And @LeviathanL, GM isn't law- at least not right now. We're discussing things on the interest check to figure them out. Hit me with the basics of your character's teleportation capabilities and I'll give em' a look over, as well as see if anybody else has any ideas for it.

 

[Cry U 945]

Also, be on the lookout for the next half hour or so, as I'm working on the sheet I've been talking about for so long and should have it ready to go soon. Spam-post done, sorry about that.

 

[Cry U 945]

Hardlight Technology:


Divided into two categories, Rigid and Free-Form.


Rigid: Uses less energy, and projects from one or more source. Forms a rigid, non-flexible object with no weight. Disappears as soon as projection from source ends, and requires a receiver.


Free-Form: Mostly used as projectiles, this type of Hardlight is used for more varied purposes than Rigid Hardlight and requires more energy, meaning it is only really efficient on smaller scales, such as portable computers, Hardlight blades, or projectiles.


Ships:


Ships will be varied in function and design. I've come up with an idea for everybody's starter ship, however. Venture Industries's last model before going under, the Venture Horizon is a perfectly well rounded jump ship equipped with two crew quarters, an engine bay, and minimal weapons systems, which will be decided upon by the player to give some unique functionality even for starter ships.


MegaCorps:


MegaCorps will be the main power houses out in galaxies untouched by governments, and a lot of the time be the ones behind things such as shady black ops assassinations. There is no good MegaCorp, at least, not usually. To get to that level of power almost all of them have done shady things, some just worse than others.


Omniverse Manufacturing: Omniverse, stepping away from the usual Corp approach, does a little bit of everything. Ships, weapons, munitions, megastores, you name it, and Omniverse has at least one.


Titan Corp: Titan Corp is a Ship-Centric corp, dominating the space ship industry, and also the reason Venture Industries went under, if the allegations of assassination are to be believed. If you want a new engine, need better navigational equipment, or have a desire to triple your ship's amount of armored plating, you go to them.


Ash Enterprises: Ash Enterprises is a weapons-centric corp, and possible owner of the cheesiest slogan with "All our weapons leave behind is ashes!" as their claim to intergalactic fame. They've got railguns, beam weapons, particle weapons, good 'ol slug throwers, and everything in between for your life-ending needs.


(Note: These corps are just examples made up for convenience to show you guys what corps would be like. They certainly are not finalized without your input, and there may be many more corps than this.)


Governments:


Ordered Intergalactic Government Alliance (OIGA): The OIGA, generally pronounced "oygah", is debatably the largest intergalactic superpower, centered around earth and the neighboring solar systems as an alliance of races.


(There will also be more governments as well, and OIGA doesn't have to be included. Figured I'd giv you guys something to look at here and start the ball rolling as well.)


Species:


Humans: Compared to most other races, humans are late to the intergalactic party, but most certainly not it's weakest contender. They are highly adaptable, and can be found almost anywhere, as representatives in governments or lowly gang members.


(There will be quite a few species, and I've decided to hit the books on coming up with some to throw them past you guys and see what you think.)


That's about all I have at the moment, as I'll also be editing, copying, and pasting this sheet once we hit a new milestone of info, and the sheet detailing final RP info will probably be in this format, or at least resembling it. I'll be looking at some video games and movies to try and draw some inspiration from as well as brainstorming some other details, and I'll hit you guy's with em' as soon as I can.

 

[AlphaDraco]

@Cry U 945


I'm in, as for contributions, I've got several alien races that I can run by you.


As far as anything else go, should we have some ancient alien civilization that just disappeared one day, only leaving its ruins behind? That seems a staple in the space opera genre. Governments and corporations would scramble over each other just for a mostly destroyed run in hopes of finding some new bit of technology.

 

[Vindictive]

@Cry U 945
I'm in, as for contributions, I've got several alien races that I can run by you.


As far as anything else go, should we have some ancient alien civilization that just disappeared one day, only leaving its ruins behind? That seems a staple in the space opera genre. Governments and corporations would scramble over each other just for a mostly destroyed run in hopes of finding some new bit of technology.

I'm a huge sucker for missing precursor races and mysterious alien ruins in fiction. This gets my support!

 

[Cry U 945]

Honestly, I was already considering having a race akin to that, but I haven't come up with many details on them, so if you've got any ideas on them, go ahead and run em' by me, @AlphaDraco.

 

[LeviathanL]

I have been interested in a siphonophorae race. A race whose specimen aren't composed of one organism but a colony of small individual animals. Examples: Portuguese Man-o-war, Hunters (Halo), Geth (Mass effect, in a way).

 

[Cry U 945]

That's great! I always found M'galekgolo (Hunters) and creatures like them to be fascinating. I'll try and have some real info on an alien race by tonight.

 

[Quarantinetimer]

Do you have a race with a gestalt intelligence planned as well? Something like the formics from Ender's Game.

 

[Cry U 945]

As in a hive-mind? I was literally just now thinking about one, but I have no real specifics on them yet. I was considering whether or not to make them insect-like.

 

[AlphaDraco]

They could be a swarms of flies, similar to the ones in Crichton 's book Prey.

 

[Cry U 945]

The swarm concept seems interesting, but I came up with an idea that could potentially severely affect the RP, hopefully for the better. What if we have a race that bio-engineers itself, such as Halo's Flood or Warhammer 40K's Tyranids, one that the rest of civilization is in just a constant war with, to the point that it is a fact of life? That could be the reason why Intergalactic war against the other alliances hasn't broken out, either- most groups realize that they should focus on fighting this threat, though that doesn't remove all infighting. What do you guys think?

 

[AlphaDraco]

I like it. Heck, they could be trying to absorb and implement every beings genetic material into their own to try and make a 'perfect' being. Instead of building starships, they could engineer some of their beings into organic starships.

 

[LeviathanL]

I was thinking extradimensional invaders, but that works too.

 

[Vindictive]

Depending on the scale of exploration in the setting they could be extragalactic invaders.


In the Warhammer lore Tyranids come from below the galactic plane which I always thought sounded very unsettling.

 

[AlphaDraco]

Also, how advanced should the general Galaxy be? I know we have hard light and that always struck me as a hyper advanced civilization type technology.

 

[Cry U 945]

I was thinking that Hardlight tech would have been a result of exploring those ancient alien ruins from before, and that while our current societies are advanced we're not on the level of coming up with Hardlight tech ourselves. We mostly reverse engineer and refabricate most Hardlight tech we find, using schematics and info gained to produce our own iterations of the tech. The most common weaponry would be energy based, such as laser or plasma fire, and different types of energy projectiles will have different properties, such as doing more damage, being more accurate, etc. I was also wondering if we should have a sort of shady government agency, like spec ops or black ops, that will oftentimes show up as enemies, or at least a third faction.

 

[Cry U 945]

I spent some time looking at some info and managed to come up with a rough draft version of that hive mind, bioengineering race we were talking about.


Species: Devorantem (More commonly known as Devor)


The Devorantem appeared before humanity even broke the boundaries of their solar system, coming from the empty space between galaxies to assault our galactic fringe. Information gathered shows that they have a hive mind social structure, and while they can think and process problems on a highly intelligent level, they cannot be reasoned with. They only have one instinct- Devour. They do so by slowly killing off a planet's life forms and gathering biological material in order to continue growing their species. They do not reproduce as most species do, as while some hatch from eggs, others are assembled from the genetic material scavenged from their numerous conquests, allowing them to make perfect killing machines.


The Devor have their own 'technology', although it hardly qualifies as such because even their weapons are living in some way. They make use of plasma and energy based weaponry by using advanced chemical reactions within their weaponry. This does not, however, stop them from using easier methods of attack such as launching spikes, or attacking with talons and fangs.


The Devor's ships are even biological, using systems similar to that of their weaponry. They are akin to massive, floating ant or wasp hives.


Throughout history, the Devor have been an ever-present enemy, and according to the Precursor's ruin's, (a placeholder name for that ancient extinct alien civilization) The Devor have visited the Milky Way before, only leaving once they had exhausted it of all biological material. It is believed the Devor are what eradicated the Precursors.


The Devor communicate via a telepathic network.


The Devor are categorized into different 'swarms', such as the Eradicate Swarm or Corrupt Swarm.


Swarms are in essence separate 'Hives' of Devor, meaning that while they have the same end goal, and seem to have been one unified unit at the beginning of their assault, they have since splintered, and each swarm has it's own queen. It has been revealed by Precursor ruins that if a Swarm's queen is killed, the Swarm loses all cohesion and begins to slaughter itself in mindless fury.


The Sentient races of the galaxy only managed to elimate one Swarm queen, and that was the Queen of Swarm Eradicate. This action managed to halt the initial assault of the Devor, and since then the sentient races of the Milky Way have been deadlocked with the Devor, no side ever really gaining ground.


Appearance: (Just some samples, nothing final as of yet, something to give you guys an idea, see which sort of theme best fits.)


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To be clear, everything here is up for debate as of yet. I just compiled this to give us all a starting point of some sort.

 

[LeviathanL]

I have an idea, what about having different types of devouring for different swarms.


One swarm devours organic life, the other inorganic substances, the other is always seeking knowledge. Basically that although each swarm is driven by the need to devour, they differ in what they think is best to assimilate.

 

[Cry U 945]

That sounds like a really good idea. We could have swarms of different varieties have different capabilities, such as the ones that devour inorganic matter having harder carapaces of metal and the like, or the ones that seek knowledge able to speak to


lure people into traps.

 

[AlphaDraco]

Let's throw a bit of conflict into these swarms and have a swarm that seeks to consume all other swarms. They are a combination of all the others and the most powerful.

 

[Cry U 945]

Draco, that sounds like a really good idea. To complicate plot, we should have Swarm Cannibal ( the cannibal swarm's temporary designation) show up mid-story. Swarm Cannibal will be kind of like a vacuum cleaner for the Swarms, almost. The Devor will be consumed by Swarm Cannibal after performing their duties as separate swarms, or at least after they should have. They ran into quite a bit of resistance from our galaxy, some of the strongest they've seen before. However Swarm Cannibal is also stronger than the other swarms, and so in the process of Galactic Consumption generally pushes the tide in the Devor's favor.


I also wanted to bring in a gameplay aspect as well. Would you guys like me to narrate events, such as corporate assassinations or loss of planets to other forces, so as to make the RP hyper-realistic? We could have it so that, say, we prediscuss a plot line of sorts for our characters to go through, or our characters interact as they're often forced together by galactic events. I really just wanted us to start thinking about RP mechanics as, even though we've started covering a lot of ground, we've still got a bit to go before we're ready to start, and I want to have a good idea of how the RP will function ahead of time to plan accordingly.

 

[AlphaDraco]

You could set it up as a type of news broadcast. That way, our characters can know of the events in-universe through a plausible means.

 

[Quarantinetimer]

Sort of like, the news system in Elite Dangerous but more detail? It's a sound method. And for the love of God, the mechanics better not involve randomization. This is not supposed to be a dice thread after all. By the way, you guys post at pretty impressive times. Posting at 3:30 a.m. indicates insomnia.

 

[LeviathanL]

Or time zones