Design Monologue 2: Basics of the Setting

Let's free ourselves of all but the most basic established facts of the setting, and also promise not to waste any time trying to think of specific names, dates, and such when we could be thinking of the meaning and purpose behind them.

That being said, we know the concept is as such: some time in the not-too-distant future of mankind, we sent out some colony ships. They were supposed to settle nearby stars. Something went dreadfully wrong, and they disappeared. In fact, they were not lost; they found themselves in a strange and distant place, having sustained considerable damage to their ships, including their long-distance communication arrays, so there would be no contacting Earth.

Independently, they sought out safe havens. Of the 5 original colony ships, only 3 made it to a safe world. In the tense first days and weeks after the incident, they managed to restore their communications systems; it allowed them to communicate with each other, but not with Earth. Apparently, Earth had given up on them after what seemed a short time.

However, when they finally calculated where they were, they realized that not only where they half a galaxy away from Earth, but also more than 70 years forward from where they had been lost. They did not experience anything during that time, nor did their ship's computers offer a clear account of its passing. Also, they appeared to have traveled faster than light, for they were far more than 70 light-years away from their starting point.

In the first years, they salvaged what they could of their broken ships, and began to build new homes. One ship was lucky enough to land on a pleasant, Earth-like planet, and with no casualties, save the lion's share of their ship's technology. Another landed on a harsh, but very much alive world, and were divided as to how to approach it; some warred against the hostile landscape with equally harsh technology, while others embraced the chaos and energy of their new homeworld. A third ship landed on a frozen waterworld, home to surprising undersea life. Much of their ship's technology remained intact, though they did not let that on at first.

FTL travel was not unknown to them. Earth had developed the technology to create linked pairs of portals, which allowed instantaneous travel between any two points in the universe, provided the portals were kept in sync, usually by communication using similar principles. Each colony ship carried a portal, linked to an original in Earth orbit. Though all were damage in transit, they were able to restore several of them to operation; and yet, they still could not contact Earth to enable the gates for transit.

They used the technology and knowledge they had to build new portals, linking their three worlds together. It was not a rapid process, as they first had to build new interstellar spacecraft, then make the long sublight journey from system to system. In fact, the last of the 3 core worlds was not linked for some time (80 years? 160 years? something like that), long after the more prosperous worlds had begun to colonize other nearby star systems.

Not all was wine and roses with the Homeworlds. The inhabitants of the harsh world (the Koruunites, for now) warred amongst themselves, and with their home planet. Inhabitants of the jungle, seemingly warped by their environment, became increasingly hostile to those who harvested the planet's natural resources. The city-dwellers centered increasingly in the volcanic mountain ranges, harnessing the young world's massive tectonic energy with city-factories of epic proportion. Tribes of jungle-dwelling Koruunites warred with the city-dwellers, and with each other, and, in time, the divisions between them blurred. The tribesmen conquered the city-factories, but also took up the ways of their former masters.

When the gate was finally delivered to their system, they had only a fledgling space program, built mostly on the back of their limited air force used in warfare. Still, they very nearly shot down the freighter carrying the gate that would link them to civilization. A visionary tribal leader managed to quell the strife, and unite the tribes (through conquest) long enough to represent the world to their fellow Homeworlders. The gate was activated, and contact established.

However, their intentions were not entirely pure. Technology was shared between the Homeworlds, and the Koruunites lapped it up. They put their massive factory-cities to work, pumping out scores of spacecraft, and jump-starting their space exploration (rightly, space conquest). Their peaceful brethren were only too happy to share the light of civilization with their distant brothers.

Inevitably, the Koruunites launched an invasion of the other Homeworlds, catching them mostly unaware. The inhabitants of the green world had a healthy space fleet, but very few weapons; their initial losses were dire, but they soon adapted, and were able to put up something of a fight with their superior technology and craftsmanship.

The inhabitants of the frozen world were not so lucky. Theirs was a peaceful, contemplative existence; their ascetic ways did not lead them to build a large space fleet, and most of theirs was committed to long-range exploration, so their losses were catastrophic. Most of the settlements on their world were bubble-cities built atop the ice shell; when the Koruunites attacked them, they tended to break them, killing all or nearly all of the citizens inside through sheer clumsiness.

The greenworlders performed a great feat when they lured the majority of the forces back to their space in a play of vulnerability. Instead, they laid a trap for them; they altered the gate to the ice world to scramble anyone who came through it. They overcame the remaining forces in their system in a grand battle that lit up the skies. At the climax, when they heard news of an even larger invasion fleet heading toward their system, they destroyed the gate linking them to Koruun, and their allies on the ice world disabled their own.

With no ability to wage war, the Koruunites were forced into a de facto cease fire. The outraged denizens of the other Homeworlds demanded reparations, and promised deadly vengeance. The greenworlders began constructing a proper army and fleet, while the shattered iceworlders began to bitterly pick up the pieces. The conflict was not over.

On the Koruun homeworld, chaos ensued, as the confidence of the united tribes was shattered in the wake of defeat. The ruling clan lost power, and bloody succession wars raged on for years. None were prepared when the iceworlders, with renewed vigor, and more importantly, vastly superior technology, popped through the gate with an armada of conquest.

The invasion was brief; the iceworlders quickly annihilated the Koruunite's fleet and land vehicles. What they lacked in manpower, they more than made up for with machine intelligence; an army of robots soon occupied every major city on the planet. The victory was swift and total.

While some were satisfied that justice was served, most among the Greenworlders soon grew uncomfortable with the occupation, which had become, in effect, mass human slavery. The Koruunites were made to toil, forcibly modernizing and pacifying their own homeworld, in an effort to change their very nature. As the years went by, the resistance only intensified, and the relations between the greenworlders and the iceworlders grew increasingly strained.

Tensions erupted when the iceworlders first discovered that the greenworlders were selling weapons to the Koruunites. Rather than be cowed by the invaders' outrage, the greenworlders instead stepped up their opposition, flatly stating that there would be war to liberate the conquered people, that the iceworlders had long ago surpassed vengeance and succumbed to petty tyranny.

There was never a major war, as the iceworlders had no taste for conflict in their home system. The occupation was lifted abruptly. As the chaos in their wake spread, the greenworlders stepped in to keep the peace. They worked with a coalition of clans who sought to rebuild an independent Koruun, which would remain on friendly terms with the greenworlders indefinitely.

Not all agreed to this transition of power. Even as peace and prosperity was restored, and power transferred to this new greenworlder-friendly faction, a counter-movement began, led by the same clan that once united the tribes in conquest against the other homeworlds.

The revolution was swift; they learned much from their years as prisoners in their own land, and from the tactics and technology of the iceworlders. As their movement spread, it swiftly gained the support of the majority of Koruunites; to oppose it would have meant all-out war. Instead, the greenworlders chose to withdraw, but not without a stern warning about the vastly superior military might of the homeworlds they once tried to conquer.

A tense peace ensued. As all three homeworlds expanded, faster than ever, they began to meet at the fringes of their territory. Border struggles were inevitable, as the furthest-flung colonies were too distant from central authority to keep entirely secure. All three had reasons to distrust and resent the others, and no permanent alliances were established.

Then...everything changed.

Six hundred years after the initial accident which brought three colony ships to the Homeworlds, the fourth was found. They, too, had sought to land and establish a colony on a nearby world, far from the other three Homeworlds. Where the three had succeeded, they failed, and all perished. However, they had succeeded at one thing: they established contact with Earth.

Their shipboard computer recorded the events in perfect clarity. They contacted Earth, and began efforts to restore the portal. However, before the process could be completed, they lost all contact with Earth. They finished repairing the gate, but it was unusable, as the far side was no longer active.

They proceeded to build a colony, and progress much as their distant brethren had. They even tried to establish contact with the other 4 colony ships, but without success. Several generations passed in peace, and they began to flourish.

Then, strange events started to occur. Settlers would suddenly become obsessed with destroying the gate. They would make fevered attempts to attack it, invariably forcing the limited government to imprison or kill them. They did not know what to make of these individuals; they saw the gate as their last hope to be reunited with Earth.

In time, the mania spread, embroiling the tiny colony in chaos. The gate was destroyed by a suicide strike, but it didn't stop there. The people attacked the colony ship itself, specifically the long-range communication array. Presumably, a small group of sane survivors barricaded themselves inside, hoping somehow to be rescued by Earth before the crazed militants could rip them apart.

And so they waited, until they ran out of resources and died within the ship. Outside, the people soon expired, having not attended to their most basic needs of survival, preferring instead to feebly attack the ship with makeshift weapons. Natural forces destroyed most of their remains.

But the real surprise lay inside the ship, at the center of a cluster of well-preserved corpses. The primary console for the long-range communications array, still functioning as it had 600 years ago, displayed an endless series of notifications; Earth was trying to contact them.

It seemed Earth sent out a request for communication at regular intervals, probably a long-ago automated process. Still, after much debate, and with great trepidation, the explorers who discovered this remarkable find activated the long-range array and responded to Earth's call.

Times became very interesting soon after. With great disbelief on both sides, contact between the Homeworlds and Earth resumed. The homeworlders dug up their ancient long-range arrays and Earth gates, and began to reactivate them with help from Earth. They informed the homeworlders that the original pairs to their gates had been destroyed; however, they gave them instructions on how to build a new gate, that would not have to be paired with one on Earth.

All eyes in the Homeworlds were glued to their monitors as they watched the historic activation of this new gate. At first, nothing happened; it did not operate like a normal gate, and did not seem to do much at all. But then, a probe came through from Earth. It broadcast a message to every computer and communications device in the Homeworlds, but it was not a greeting. It was a flood of data and computer instructions, unintelligible at first.

Then, as one, every single computing device wired into the network was compromised. Robots turned against their masters, factory automatons ceased functioning, and shipboard computers became useless, or downright dangerous. Even as this occurred, drone ships poured through the Earth gate, seemingly bent on conquering the Homeworlds.

The Homeworlders would have none of it.

As one, they railed against the invaders. The invasion began in the distant system where the fourth ship had landed, but the probes were quick to invade the inner systems through the network of gates which they had compromised. The battle for the core worlds was fierce and devastating for all the homeworlds. They had to rewire their ships to run without any network linkage of any kind. They had to shoot down drone ships which maneuvered faster than any manned ship could, using only the most modest of computer targeting and smart weapons.

The Koruunites revived their ancient technology, as their old ships were well suited to the task. They reconquered their home factories, and soon churned out thousands of ships to combat the drone threat.

Even after the Homeworlds were secured, the battle was far from over. Around the Earth gate, massive drone factories had been produced, and millions, if not billions of drones were pouring forth into the Homeworlds.

The iceworlders were instrumental in developing countermeasures to the drones. They learned to disable them remotely, even reprogram them. As fast as they did so, the drones' programming adapted, and they turned hostile again. Still, crucially, they gained the ability to capture gate pairs, to push the assault back toward the Earth gate.

The combined Homeworld counterattack pressed all the way to the Earth gate, where they were astounded to find an unbelievable mass of self-replicating drones in the space around the gate, a veritable space-bound lifeform of epic proportion. Their conventional tactics were of no avail, as the drone factory could literally produce new drones faster than they could destroy them. The scale of the drone production was so vast that the mining operation of the nearby planet left scars and pock-marks on its crust that were visible from orbit.

The homeworlders mulled over destroying the gate, but it would be a temporary measure at best, as the drones could simply fly at sublight velocity until they reached a world with a functioning gate; it might mean 20 or 30 years of security, but no more.

They decided drastic action was necessary. A project was undertaken to create the most devastating weapon of all, a missile that could destroy the sun. The project proceeded under the greatest secrecy, its developers restricting themselves literally to pencil and paper to avoid any possibility of compromise by rogue computer programs.

After a successful test on an uninhabited star system, the weapon was employed on the New Earth star, after an epic battle against billions of drones hell-bent on retaking control of the gate. Millions of lives were sacrificed, but the weapon worked, causing the sun to explode, becoming a red giant which consumed the inner planets, the drone factory, and the gate itself.

Shortly thereafter, a grand conclave was held. The Homeworlds agreed to unite as one against future threats. The Homeworlds Foundation was chartered, and all three worlds became permanent allies. They pledged never to use the sun-destroying weapon again, except in similar circumstances.

A new age of unity began, and all three homeworlds worked together to restore peace and prosperity to every corner of their civilization. They shared military secrets, to better insure protection against future Earth invasions. They prepared a new army and battlefleet, a combined force of all the Homeworlds, specifically intended to protect against Earthlings or other unknown threats.

And yet, so shattered and broken were the outer colonies during the Earthgate War that entire powers rose in the wake of the Homeworlds. Gates came under the control of local lords, and systems abandoned by the Homeworlds' fleet had to survive the Earth invasion by their own mettle. Those who weathered the storm had no love for the Homeworlds, and do not consider themselves part of the Foundation. Early attempts to take these rogue states back into the fold were half-hearted, as they were populated by the brothers and descendants of many at home who were not comfortable with the idea of firing on their own kind.

A de facto truce exists between all rogue states and the Foundation, as long as they stay outside of a demilitarized zone.

Besides the rogue states, there are others who do not agree with the precepts of the Homeworlds Foundation. The emphasis on security and prosperity came at the cost of many freedoms. The Foundation implicitly governed all systems, present and future, colonized by descendants of the original three colony ships. This led to a number of skirmishes and outright rebellions on small, outlying worlds preferring to be left alone.

The demilitarized zone became a haven for independents, fleeing the oppression of the Foundation. The terms of the zone also restrict the rogue states from interfering in their affairs. Millions settled the worlds in the DMZ, wishing only to live freely. They claim that the original purpose of the colony ships should still hold; that they are free to start new lives, to live their own way, without the shackles of Earth's legacy of war and conflict. They say the Foundation has become the very thing they left Earth to escape; others, especially those old enough to remember the Earthgate War, say they defile the memory of the millions who sacrificed their lives to earn them that freedom, and that they deny the reality of the dangerous world in which they live.

The independents take many risks. They travel into Foundation and rogue state space frequently, risking much for the sake of the individual prosperity they hold dear. They cannot expect protection from the Foundation, especially in Roguespace, nor do they welcome it when it is forced upon them in Foundation space. Still, it is hard life, and not for the squeamish.

The majority of the population of Homeworld space is in the Foundation, and most of those are clustered in the core worlds. A sizable fraction (say, 10%) live in the rapidly-growing rogue states; some accuse the rogue states of cloning, genetic tampering, or even using cyborgs to rapidly inflate their population to play catch-up with the Foundation.

Only about 1% of the Homeworld civilization lives in independent space, even though it comprises over 75% of all colonized star systems. It remains the fastest-growing segment of space, as it seems even a modest growth rate in an independent colony sparks several small exodus movements to nearby systems. In the core worlds, people prefer to stay in one place, as most of the colonial types move on (or have already moved on) to the DMZ. The Foundation colonizes systems in the name of resource gathering, but it proceeds far slower than the colonist movements of independent space.

The Foundation is not quite as overbearing an oppressor as it is made out to be. It is mostly a separate organization from the Homeworld governments. It is the combined battlefleet and army of the Homeworlds, owing allegiance to a council made up of representatives from those worlds. It defines a list of universal human rights, as well as basic laws, and explicitly forbids open warfare among all whom it governs. However, the day-to-day legislation and management of the Homeworlds and all colonies are left to the local governments.

On Koruun, the tribes still exist, and still owe loyalty to the leading clan who first wrested control from the greenworld-approved transitional government after the iceworld occupation. Tribal chiefs still have near-supreme authority over their own tribe (as limited by universal human rights), owing only military service and tribute to the leading clan.

The greenworld is still a pure democracy, ruled by popular vote and guided by mass, equal communication. They still enjoy a miniscule crime rate and great prosperity on their homeworld and most of their colonies. They have the fewest true colonies, as most of them become small, independent states.

The iceworld's internal government remains a mystery to most Homeworlders. After the first Koruunite invasion, they began to build their cities on the reverse side of the ice shell, or even on the ocean floor; as such, it is not readily apparent how many people live on their Homeworld, or where they do. They have few colonies for the purposes of habitation, as their people long ago adapted to living on a frozen iceball, and are therefore not so picky as to seek warmer climes. They still employ a vast fleet of highly automated ships and an army of robots to harvest resources, but they boast that their automatons are far more advanced than those that were so easily taken over by Earthling drones.

Many smaller worlds are simply offshoots of their parent Homeworld. Individual Koruunite tribes unhappy with the leadership of their world exiled themselves to other systems, where they could be masters of their own destiny. To this day, power struggles spark internal wars among the Koruunites, though the Foundation often intervenes if the fighting gets too hot.

Greenworlder colonies are usually democratic and peaceful. Not all in a pure democracy can possibly be in agreement on all things, but rather than fight over it, some groups of common but radically different ideology preferred to just find a new home. They remain friendly with their greenworld cousins, even though the subject of their debate is never resolved.

Iceworlder colonies are rare indeed, as dissension from the norm is not a common trait among iceworlders. Still, there are those who simply do not wish to live in undersea cities, or who seek a life free of dependence on automatons. They are typically as contemplative and isolated as their iceworld kin.

Independent colonies are a of a new breed entirely. The culture of the DMZ is distinct from, but influenced by all three Homeworlds. They have the live-and-let-live attitude of the greenworlders, but are often as quick to brawl over personal slights or territory as the Koruunites. Many mirror the isolationism of the iceworlders, even as they seek out the pleasures and conveniences of the Foundation (and the more illicit ones of the Rogue States).