Session 2 Monologue 14 Braver New Homeworlds

This setting needs more...something.

Having actually played a game (albeit a bit on the unorthodox side), some of the flaws are coming to light. The setting lacks punch, it feels too derivative, and more importantly too limited. Hard sci-fi is great, but sometimes it feels like I just took away a bunch of sci-fi tropes and replaced them with...nothing.

Herein I'll consider a revolutionary change to the setting.

Random Notes

Ideas from fantasy

This is space fantasy, not simple "sci-fi", so why not borrow more from regular fantasy?

• Nobles and royals: sure, there are lords, but where are the space kingdoms?
• Great houses: a fun way to divide the core worlds, similar to MechWarrior
• More homeworlds: all 3 core worlds are fun. Plus the NTC. Not so much Zion. And that's all we get? We need dozens of worlds like that...otherwise it's like a fantasy world with 3 nations.

Random implementation notes

• Get the Sporelings off Tempus. Sure, that's where it started, but it has no privileged place in the Spore...diaspora, as it were. They aren't afraid of space travel, and they want to reconquer every world that hosts the spore, insisting that their claim is older than anything a homo sapiens can counter with.
• Play up the "noble savage" angle with the Sporelings. They can literally commune with nature, so long as it shares their lineage, and they would feel deeply tied to the land, and its many "spirits". Get more of a Native American vibe going. Their basic social unit is the tribe--there should be a decent number of those, more than 2-3, less than 20. The Dekori/Arcori split is on a larger scale than that...or maybe the Arcori are one proper tribe, and "Dekori" means "not Arcori".

Random Ideas

• The Archivists: weird people who go around collecting artifacts.
• Evil Mordor planet! Something sithy.
• Phobos is a dragon! They can turn into anything, not just dragonoids.
• Light beings who live in crystals (I travel light)

Brainstorming Worlds

The Classics

• Karma (unchanged)
• Tempus (unchanged)
• Terra Nova (maybe they didn't split off Karma? In any case, retain their rivalry)
• Abel (unchanged)
• Zion (had its own ship, basically space mormons)
• Arcor (had its own ship)

Migrated from SW

• Tion (change some names, compact the history)
• Pandora's gas giant world

New Worlds

History

• 0 NE (New Era): First ships arrive in Homeworlds space (and start landing/crashing)
• ~10 NE: Uninfected Tempus colonists succumb. Sporelings from here on out.
• ~75 NE: Karma / Terra Nova split (if that's still a thing)
• ~115 NE: Abelite probe ship makes contact with Karma
• ~120 NE: Abelite probe ship discovers Tempus and its fate
• ~150 NE: Abel robot invasion fleet arrives on Tempus
• ~185 NE: Tempus successfully overcomes Abelite regime, united under Dekori clan, begins invading other worlds
• ~200 NE: Dekori attack Karma. Goes bad for Karma initially. Karman Union created; invaders are repelled.
• ~205 NE: Dekori attack Abel and fail utterly. Arcori make contact with Abel.
• ~220 NE: First charter of the Homeworlds Foundation. Karma, NTC, Imperium initial signatories. Travel times between home worlds are still 10-20 years. Agreement to avoid interstellar conflict, collaborate on scientific research, establish norms for colonial claims.
• 220-500: Early expansion era. Dekori occasionally conflict with Foundation colonies, but mainly fight each other. Intra-foundation conflict is rare, given interstellar travel times and abundant resources.
• ~500 NE: After centuries of traveling at low sublight speeds, Foundation researchers (mostly Abel and the Arcori, let's face it) develop capability to build stable wormhole-like tunnels (at great expense) between two linked "gates", which can then be spread apart (at sublight speed, of course) over theoretically infinite distance. Within 10 years, all Foundation homeworlds are linked by one or more "warp gates", allowing rapid transit between any core world, as well as real-time communication.
• ~540 NE: The Dekori (finally) become signatories of the Foundation.
• ~600 NE: All sizable colony worlds have a warp gate to their Homeworld, and the inter-Homeworld network is suitably redundant. It is now commonplace for median-income individuals to be able to travel between any two points in a colonized solar system in a matter of hours.
• ~660 NE: After centuries of complaints about the exclusive ownership of key elements of warp gate technology by the Abelites and Arcori, a malcontent faction (comprised of the NTC, Dekori, Zion, etc) seize control of several key gates and demand the democratization of their technology. Abel and the Arcori respond, and the First War of the Homeworlds begins.
• 660-680 NE: First War of the Homeworlds. Fighting is infrequent and brief, as forces had to be sent across interstellar distance at sublight speed. Common warp drives are capable of near-light velocity, but only for a matter of hours, not years. Initially, specialized long-haul ships were modified to carry drone payloads, but these were poor matches for defending fleets. Eventually, each faction produced newly-engineered long-range attack craft, as well as "gatecrasher" craft that would swarm through gates in an attempt to overwhelm static defenses. The late stages of the war saw rapid acceleration of the frequency and destructiveness of battle, as well as strategic bombing of factories and other non-military targets. The war stalled when Karma, who had remained neutral (likely to avoid tension with the nearby NTC), announced that they would offer military resistance to any faction targeting civilians, especially with weapons of mass destruction. This was noteworthy as, given the bountiful resources of their Homeworld, Karma has long enjoyed a sizable population advantage, and by this time had a population in the tens of billions--and an army to match. Though they continued to claim neutrality, the practical reality was that Abel/Arcor side was the only one in a position to start these attacks with any hope of success, and thus their promise of resistance was an implicit threat to join the malcontent faction, tipping the scales strongly in their favor.
• 680 NE: Armistice is declared, and high-level talks begin between all factions. The result is the Treaty of Kepler, in which all Homeworlds release any claim to ownership of warp gates, and instead vest all such authority to the Homeworlds Foundation, newly empowered with its own government and armed forces, with the sole purpose of protecting inter-Homeworld travel, trade, and communication, sworn never to interfere in conflicts, nor show any preference to any user of their gates (as long as they are a signatory). The Foundation would be restricted to claiming no worlds or star systems of their own, but rather housing their citizens exclusively in space habitats (with reasonable access to building materials).
• 680-960 NE: Expansion continues, as borders are pushed outward at a sizable fraction of the speed of light. In inner systems, resource pressure mounts. Corporate and aristocratic governments tend to assign sweeping swaths of resources to early investors/patriarchs, causing generational conflict as each claim pans out differently. Innumerable tiny conflicts spark, occasionally igniting larger ones, and even full faction wars. Worlds and systems change hands. The largest conflicts tend to fizzle out when major players such as Karma start throwing their weight around, or when belligerents go too far, and Foundation Article 4 comes into effect: any use of weapons of mass destruction against non-military targets can and must be resisted by the Foundation itself, which, beyond its significant military power, can instantly deny any player access to warp gates.
• 960 NE: Earthgate system discovered. Probe ship from Earth, carrying something similar to a warp gate (but more compact and advanced), seemingly crashed. Researchers arrive, the system is soon placed under provisional Foundation Protectorate status, preventing any claims.
• 962 NE: Earthgate War: Researchers find a way to activate the warp gate. All hell breaks loose. An endless swarm of drones emerge from the gate, quickly taking control of the facility around it, and streaming toward the warp gate into Homeworlds space at breakneck speed. The Foundation attempted to shut down the gate, but the drones took control of it, cutting off their access. With no better option, they destroyed it. Survivors stranded in the Earthgate system were rescued by Abelite vessels in possession of jump drives (a revelation that would soon become very important for the war). Word from Earthgate managed to barely outpace the stream of drones, and critical tunnels were deactivated, preventing the