[M|OOC] Starstream
Zeconis Minor, Perseus
Unity dreadnought Trafalgar
Admiral Versyn Apris commanding
It's been three weeks since Novgorod went down. I'm still receiving contact reports. Civilian evacuation is all over the map and fleet assets are stretched to the breaking point. We lost the Pythian only yesterday - what the hell was a medical ship doing unescorted? Gods, no one expected this. Andromeda just waltzed in and sunk an Arcadia. That base was supposed to be untouchable - where are they getting this kind of firepower?
Well, that's a question for IntAffairs, I suppose. But what is Command playing at? People are dying out here and they've got the Trafalgar watching for "strategic fleet movements" in fey space - our own allies! If they'd just let us work together we could close off these incursion points for good, but they're afraid for their own politics and they've got a carrier group playing traffic cop while evacuees are getting atomized. At the risk of sedition, maybe Andromeda is onto something.
Computer, delete that remark.
I just... I feel so useless out here. I joined the Unity navy to save lives. Sitting half a sector away doing nothing like this? It doesn't sit right with me.
Admiral?
Computer, pause recording. Commander?
Contact report, sir. A convoy of civvy ships just dropped out of starstream in our DZ.
Damn. Weapons?
Cold, sir, but they've moved to obstruct our exit vectors. They're being lead by an orcish personnel carrier, designation Balor. Latest transmission has them protesting customs delays.
Right. Yellow alert, shields up. Let's talk to them.
Trade orbital, Zeconis Minor III, Perseus
Civilian vessel Guernica
Lex? You seeing this, right?
Buncha haulers blockading that command carrier? Yeah. You thinking what I'm thinking?
Reckon so. Hard burn towards 'em, scramble our drive signature among theirs, jump out and run the circuit?
Yeah. All goes right, we'll meet our contact before teatime.
Haha! Nav calculations are gonna be sketchy, all those other ships around...
Never stopped us before, has it?
The year is 3748. Humanity has been through hell - and not just humanity, but all the races of Earth; elves and dwarves and orcs all the same. From the ashes a new society had emerged, one wonderful and terrible all at once, home to savage nobles and noble savages; to self-serving crime lords and black ops operatives who do what the masses must not know; to businesspeople and artists, theologians and slaves - and to ordinary people going about the business of living. The Terran Unity, it's called, but a society less united is hard to imagine. From the philosophical navel-gazing of Sol to the brutal industry of Orion and the gritty frontier sectors of Perseus and Andromeda, the Unity is a patchwork of radically different planets, societies, and governments, all bound together into one intergalactic society through equal parts economic convenience and big guns.
Enter Guernica, a transport-for-hire that's definitely not packing any illegal weaponry. When a piece of research equipment she's been hired to transport turns out to be an experimental starstream weapon, the lives of her crew turn a little more interesting than they'd like.
Me? I'm the captain. You?
I don't have any particular character sheet template, but I've seen a pretty solid one floating around that y'all can use if you want. Please specify ahead of time what job you'd like on the ship! We really don't need two gunners, after all. Keep in mind that this is explicitly a fantasy setting, despite the spacey trappings - and, due to the way FTL travel works in this setting, we're going to need at least one spellcasting character.
Spoiler: Characters
Alexis "Lex" Sorokina, Captain (Biophysicist)
Shiro Ayo, Engineer (LiveVoltage)
Jayax Morakesh, Outsider (Splat)
Samuel "Sam" McAllister, Quartermaster (dakkagor)
Ansegl "Ans" Cometrat, Navigator (Enigma)
NPCs:
Spoiler: Ozymandias
The man known only as Ozymandias is a mercenary with delusions of grandeur. He pilots a customized Prominence-class gunship named Decisive Wind, which boasts enhanced targeting systems, retooled drives capable of self-optimizing for endurance or maneuverability as needed, and an auxiliary feed for his railguns equipped with a small number of antimatter-cored rounds. He has also invested heavily in the ship's automation to the point of not requiring any crew besides himself - after all, relying on others means splitting the bounty with them.
To Ozymandias, a criminal is a criminal is a criminal, and he takes on contracts from both Unity officers and private interests to bring criminals to justice. The fact that his actions in pursuit of lawbreakers are often themselves illegal seems to not bother him. He sees himself as fulfilling a higher purpose to which the law itself is subordinate, and therefore only as constrained by it as he wishes to be.
Ozymandias's past and real name are shrouded in mystery. It is widely known that he has a cousin aboard the Heraklion, an escort cruiser in the Trafalgar's battlegroup, as well as some involvement with various charitable organizations across the Zeconis sector. Any information on Ozymandias or his ship is highly valuable among local outlaw groups.
Ozymandias has tangled unsuccessfully with the Guernica crew before. This has earned the crew some notoriety among smuggler circles - many a toast has been made to "the crew that flipped off Ozymandias" - as well as his eternal hatred. Many of Guernica's aliases and camouflage systems were born of the need to blend in when Decisive Wind is nearby. The battle also taught them a great deal about his tactical abilities and weaknesses. While Ozymandias is a competent pilot with a pocket destroyer, his sense of superiority lead to him getting cocky, then furious when the crew managed to avoid his shots at their engines, finally permitting them a trick shot that took out his sensors long enough to jump out. (To this day Decisive Wind's forward radar is visibly after-market.) While he was eventually able to track their jump, they had taken shelter at a busy merchant base and he was unwilling to risk the collateral damage of his main weapons, allowing them to give him the slip for good. Analysis of the damage to Decisive Wind after the battle suggested that Ozymandias has intentionally lightened the gunship's armor for enhanced engine performance, relying on sheer forward firepower to prevent counterattack, a fact which might also be exploitable in the future.
Spoiler: Melissa LaFontaine
Melissa LaFontaine was the CAG on a Unity carrier, the Lord of Chaos, before it was abandoned after a plasma containment failure. For reasons unknown, but likely involving LaFontaine's deteriorating mental state, she snuck back aboard the ship after its capture by pirate forces, and resumed her old job as if nothing had changed. She's a total adrenaline junky, a fact which had earned her several reprimands from the Unity chain of command, and which is now responsible for brazen pirate attacks on ships of the Trafalgar's battle group. Nonetheless, she is a competent pilot and tactician, well-trained in Unity tactics both regular and irregular. She is particularly fond of glide attacks, deploying her wing along divergent vectors and letting inertia carry them while the ships themselves turn to maximize their guns' effect on target.
LaFontaine has a particular hatred of anyone she's lost a battle to. When Lex defaulted on a contract citing ethical objections, she entered into a rage state and attacked. Guernica's crew exploited this rage to outmaneuver her, baiting her into attacking too aggressively and leaving herself vulnerable to defensive fire. The battle inflicted moderate damage on her ships, and she has held it against them since then, demanding they "settle accounts". Lex's policy when dealing with her is to piss her off in hopes of exploiting her rage again, but whether she will fall for the same trick twice is an open question.
Spoiler: Josephine
The proprietress of a brothel on Wayfarer Station in Zeconis Minor, Josephine has been a friend of the crew ever since the first time they needed a place to hide. She's a savvy businesswoman who's always on the lookout for a profit, in her chosen industry or not, but she has a reputation for class and honorable dealings not generally found on Wayfarer. She has a particular hatred for slavers - regardless of legality - and any number of ex-slaves have found a fresh start in Josephine's employ.
Spoiler: Admiral Versyn Apris
Versyn Apris is a Unity admiral, CO of the dreadnought Trafalgar and its battlegroup. An honorable man above all else, Apris is committed to bringing stability to the region. This mission is complicated by his official standing orders, which instruct him to prioritize monitoring a fey enclave near the Zeconis/Arcadia contact point. Orders aside, the Trafalgar's presence has had a profound effect on the sector. It's an open secret that increased mercenary activity against pirate and smuggler targets is Apris' doing, mediated through the light cruisers Herklion and Spirit of Reconciliation. Paradoxically, some pirate groups have started acting more aggressively since Apris' arrival - possibly in hopes of capturing Unity hardware for their own ships, possibly as a political move to drag civil discontent out into the open, or possibly just for bragging rights. The loss of Novgorod Station to an Altarian raiding fleet has only increased Apris' sense of impotence and doubt.
How, exactly, such a distinguished admiral got himself assigned to such a backwater corner of space is a mystery. One theory concerns the fate of the Oberon, a warship under Apris' command lost during a civilian evacuation in Andromeda in spite of orders from High Command to abandon its convoy and withdraw. Another speculates that his assignment is the first wave of a long-term plan to bring the frontier under closer regulation. Conspiracy theories, of course, abound, which are not helped by the presence of multiple science ships in the Trafalgar's fleet
The following is OPTIONAL reading for anyone who wants to know more about the setting. You are NOT expected to read all of it unless you want to.
13 Nov: Expanded magic section to detail limitations and technological augmentations.
14 Nov: Added details on the Unity races.
Spoiler: Setting reference
Spoiler: The 'Verse
Phenomena:
Spoiler: The Starstream
The starstream is a seven-dimensional hyperspace containing a sort of fluidic energy (the description is more idomatic than technical, as the phenomenon appears impossible to describe in terms of conventional physics). It is the source of magic and plays a role in three-dimensional physics, and the same hyperspace domain is used in interstellar travel.
Every point in conventional reality ("realspace") has a corresponding point in the starstream (that point's "streamspace"). The realspace side of these relationships is relative to local celestial bodies, not absolute coordinates. They are highly nonlinear: while some contiguous areas of realspace will correspond to contiguous areas of streamspace, many nearby areas will instead have very widely spaced streamspaces or vice-verse. A spell is known that can transfer a properly equipped ship into the starstream, after which it may exploit this nonlinearity for interstellar travel.
Suppose that a ship wishes to travel from Sol to Aldebaran. It happens that the streamspace projections of Sol and Aldebaran have a common area: a point in orbit of Neptune and multiple points orbiting the Aldebaran star have adjacent streamspaces. Such areas are called contact points, transfer points, or gates. This ship, then, would simply move to the appropriate contact point, enter the starstream, move to the streamspace of its intended destination, and return to realspace.
The starstream is not uniform. The fluidic energy that fills it has different densities at different points, and flows much like a real-world river might. (Ships can save fuel by working with these currents.) There is a range of safe densities; a ship entering an area with an unsafe density will likely be destroyed instantly. A realspace area with an unusually dense streamspace is a maelstrom; one with an unusually empty one is a void. Both types of areas exhibit exotic physics and are extremely inhospitable. Within the safe range, magic is easier in areas with denser streamspaces.
The Unity has developed a spell to divert the starstream, creating a temporary void. Details are highly classified, and rumors of a weaponized form are controlled by a well-funded counterintelligence unit.
Spoiler: Magic
Magic is an integral part of the universe. It can be defined as overwriting physics or metaphysics by momentarily diverting the local starstream to achieve some particular effect. The starstream is therefore both the thing that magic operates on and the source of its energy. Working magic requires mathematical ability, mental focus, and physical stamina; one must solve the appropriate equations, then reach out to the starstream and force it into some new configuration. A strength in one of these areas can overcome a deficiency in others, however; for example, a more talented mathematician can often define the same effect using less energy, lessening the mental and physical burden of casting the spell. The rules of magic are a field of active research, and theoretical discussions of it tend to resemble those of physics.
The spell to move a ship through the starstream is among the most important. Translation magic is also common, allowing individuals without a language in common to communicate - though more than one diplomatic incident has been traced to a spell not properly accounting for alien semantics. Most mages also know a few common utility spells, of which the most critical is the spell to dismiss another spell.
The concept of a "soul" is a provable reality, and highly entangled with the starstream. All organic life has some ability to access streamspace energies through their souls (an alternate view holds that that capacity itself constitutes a soul), permitting spellcasting. (To date, Unity science has been unable to cast a spell without organic assistance.) The process of doing so is invigorating and often carries health benefits as the body and mind absorb residual energies, but can lead to physical and mental dependency if done in excess - or death if too much energy is absorbed. The connection between body, soul, and spellcasting limits the practicality of technological assistance. When used, it typically takes the form of either massive capacitor banks, allowing the mage to safely source more power (such as, for example, in a starship's engine room), or or neurological augmentation to facilitate on-the-fly calculation of new spells. Other, more exotic augments are available, but these typically have the result of exchanging raw power for finesse rather than an outright improvement.
While most mages work with physics, that is not the only realm in which magic can operate. Souls are equally valid targets for spells, as seen above with translation magic. There is also a vast and highly theoretical realm of metamagic - spells to improve, deflect, or otherwise alter or experiment on other spells - such as the universal dismissal spell every mage learns near the beginning of their career. Lastly, the nonlinear nature of the starstream occasionally allows spells to operate across time, and while outright time travel itself inevitably causes the destruction of the mage attempting it in what may be a metaphysical defense mechanism, scrying on the past or future is safe and often profitable, occasional migraines aside.
Critically, while magic may impose new behaviors on existing physical systems, attempting to radically alter the laws of physics invariably results in either no effect at all, or the complete destruction of the mage making the attempt. Mages may be able to work around physical laws, but they cannot outright ignore them. Invisibility spells are a commonly cited example: an invisible mage is effectively blind as photons pass directly through their invisible eyes. Teleportation magic likewise can only be accomplished by passing through the starstream, as to do otherwise would require infinite acceleration, or at least acceleration to tear the teleported object apart, leaving the teleport subject to starstream turbulence and requiring precise knowledge of the destination coordinates. That said, mages are a clever sort.
Spoiler: Behemoths
blahblah space whales
Politics:
Spoiler: Terran Unity ("The Unity")
The Unity is the largest single government in known space. They are a loose confederation of worlds populated by the Earth-born races: humans, elves, dwarfs, orcs, and the occasional vampire. They once counted the fey folk among their numbers, but they have since left. A combination of this hands-off, confederate style of government and a highly sophisticated interstellar economy is often cited as the main reason for their colonial success. Some theorize that the worlds of the Unity are like the cells of an organism: each contributes something to a gestalt, interdependent, and evolved whole.
Unity culture is highly diverse. Most worlds specialize in a small number of things: agriculture, say, or scientific or arcane research, industry, pleasure, philosophy, religion, warfare, trade, or more exotic things. Furthermore, each world has its own culture, which can be radically different even across small spaces (though worlds with especially active trade tend to normalize each other somewhat). As such, anyone with the means to book passage on a spaceship can leave their world and find a new one more to their liking - which is so common that helping new residents acclimate is a popular profession. On the other hand, those without the means to do so are pretty much stuck: there's no central authority to appeal to, and if they want to leave their world due to a dispute with the local government... In particular, there is no Unity-wide ban on slavery, and slaves have no recourse at all (though many worlds do prohibit particularly cruel abuses).
The Unity is described in further detail later in this document.
Semantic note: the term "Unity" is conventionally used to refer to the society and/or its members (for example, rebels might describe themselves as "not Unity"). The term for Earth-native species is "Terran", though whether or not that word includes the fey is contextual.
Spoiler: Fey Defiance
The Defiance is a breakway culture, consisting of almost all fey and a smattering of other races. The initial point of contention was the increasingly theocratic culture of the early Unity, which disturbed the fey on both spiritual and political grounds. At the time, most starship navigators were fey due to their intuitive understanding of streamspace, which would prove to be a very strong negotiating tool.
Fey society revolves around personal theologies. Every fey, with vanishingly few exceptions, has some private awareness of spirituality - though few will agree on even the most basic characteristics of that spiritual awareness. Some assert vast pantheons, others animistic nature spirits, still others a gestalt consciousness of the universe as a whole: the only agreement is that it means something - and that that something is somehow related to the starstream, the source of magic and, some say, souls. This experience was at one time a question of profound interest to Unity philosophers, but interest has fallen away since the fey left.
Since leaving Earth, the fey have developed an admiration for space travel. Starstream travel often has health benefits - but none find it so intoxicating as the fey do. The Defiance uses organic starships for both their navy and their homes; planet-dwelling fey rarely remain so for long. They've become extremely nomadic so as to expose themselves to streamspace as often as possible, though systems with many contact points act as semi-consistent marketplaces for fey goods. Relations with the Unity have calmed in the centuries since their breakaway, and fey crews are valuable contact for any Unity merchants who can get on their good side.
There are multiple subspecies of fey, too numerous to describe here. "Fey" is a general term, or "the fey races" if one wishes to be specifically general. Actual fey rarely identify strongly with their particular subspecies.
Spoiler: Altarian tribes
The Altarians are a quadrupedal species native to the Norma-Cyrus arm of the Milky Way. They are named after the site of first contact with Unity forces, when they engaged rebel forces in Altair - and the Unity peacekeeping force sent to suppress them.
Speaking generally about the Altarians is difficult. Unlike the Unity or Defiance, they have little central authority, organizing themselves instead into small tribal fleets. This tribal structure exists on their planetary colonies as well. The best known tribes are the aggressive ones: raiding parties from these fleets will launch an incursion into another race's space, destroy what they have to and steal the rest, and withdraw on high-performance drives before a strong response can be mounted. Worryingly, this aggression is contagious through the species' natural telepathy; it appears to be the cognitive analogue of a virus.
Altarians are capable of limited telepathy, which is accomplished with an organ akin to a radio transceiver located between their four legs. If a group of Altarians spends significant time together, their thoughts begin to synchronize, until they eventually resemble a composite organism more than distinct individuals. Their ships incorporate an artificial form of this organ, permitting an entire tribal fleet to synchronize their thoughts and actions. This makes them deadly opponents in fleet combat, and may also partially explain their raiding behavior: anything outside their own fleet is an outsider. This same ability, however, makes them susceptible to contagious mental conditions: in particular, the ultra-aggressive behavior some tribal fleets exhibit is the result of a mental defect that only becomes apparent once multiple synchronized organisms are infected, and is relatively asymptomatic before. These aggressive fleets are widely thought to be responsible for the relative lack of biodiversity in the galaxy. In more recent times, technological advances and cooperation with Unity forces have gone a ways to holding back the condition.
Both the Unity and Defiance produce electromagnetic weapons to disrupt Altarian fleets. Short-range versions of this jamming technology are available for civilian vessels and recommended for any ship venturing near Altarian territory, as a precaution against raiders. This technology presented a serious sticking point in diplomatic relations as it is (understandably) a major taboo in their society; however, it has been shown effective in checking the spread of their communicable madness by isolating symptomatic ships in a fleet, permitting the rest to open fire or depart. The Unity's ability to engage infected fleets without infecting themselves has made them very interesting to those tribes interested in curing the condition.
An individual Altarian stands roughly two meters tall atop four squat legs. The torso is a rough pyramid shape and extremely flexible; in melee combat, some specimens have been observed using their own body as a surprisingly effective whip. They have a pair of arms on both sides, the upper weak and possibly vestigial. Their lifespans are relatively short, maxing out at around 50 without advanced medical care.
Spoiler: Minor powers
Spoiler: Unity rebellions
The Unity is in a state of perpetual rebellion. The lawless Andromeda colonies and the breakaway fey aside, the indirect nature of Unity government and attitude of extreme cultural acceptance allows more ideologically inclined colonies to enter a state of open rebellion with little external interference. This is generally permitted but frowned upon as long as the region in question doesn't actively interfere with Unity naval operations, renege on taxes, or start shooting, and many are pacified diplomatically without further incident. Statistical modeling, however, suggests that certain Internal Affairs and Special Operations units tend to become suspiciously active immediately before such negotiations.
The Unity tends to lump pirates and active rebel groups together, treating the former as a smaller version of the latter even if they're only in it for money.
Spoiler: Magellanic Consortium
The Magellanic Consortium is a mysterious race that has so far only been observed within the Magellanic satellite galaxies. Very little data on then is available, as they rarely communicate except to warn interlopers out of their territory (a warning delivered through translation magic and followed up with thermonuclear weapons). Their ships and spaceborne habitats are a distinctive brilliant white color and have been compared to demented snowflakes.
The single exception of the Consortium's disinterest in other species to date occured when the Defiance vessel Insight jumped to the Magellanic Clouds with an experimental void-hardened stream drive. The test was unsuccessful and the ship arrived in a state of extreme disrepair, but it attracted the interest of Syndicate forces, who offered to repair the vessel in exchange for one of its backup drives. From this, it appears that the species has some special interest in starstream technology. The designation "Syndicate" was established in this encounter, being their own word for their society (as interpreted by translation spells).
The crew of the Insight reported that the interior of the Syndicate vessel had extremely weak artificial gravity and was full of thin, low-energy plasma similar in coloration to the ship's hull. It also lacked anything analogous to floors, walls, or ceilings, being populated instead by platforms suspended in the fog and linked by thin railings, both comprised of an indeterminate dark-colored material. The vessel's crew organisms consisted of a central nodule tentatively speculated to function as a brain, surrounded by an irregular arrangement of armlike structures ending in grasping claws, which they would use to rappel along the interior railings. The beings exhibited considerable alarm when their fey guests attempted to fly alongside them. Interface to the ship systems appeared to be accomplished by direct neural link between an organ extruded from the hand and structures raised structures jutting out from suspended platforms. Individual organisms displayed considerable variety in the arrangement of their appendages, and on several occasions clusters of two, three, or even four appeared to have become fused together at the ends of their limbs. These composite organisms exhibited highly aggressive behavior, even towards other members of their own species, and did not appear engaged in any meaningful work aboard the ship. The fey were not permitted to observe them in detail, possibly for their own protection.
The exact mechanism used to repair the Insight is unknown, but provided restored sufficient hull integrity the ship to return to its home galaxy. Her crew has subsequently reported substantial increases in drive efficiency while in the starstream, and she now serves as a very fast courier for high-priority communications within the Defiance. Due to the Syndicate's territorial habits and the uncertain nature of their objectives, no further attempts to establish contact have been made.
Spoiler: Asimov swarms
Where the Syndicate is mysterious, the Asimov swarms are an impossibility. Even the most advanced artificial intelligence is incapable of spellcraft, and yet these mechanical objects are capable of starstream transit. The name was bestowed upon them by Unity observers; while they are clearly capable of communication with each other, they have never acknowledged a hail from any Unity, Defiance, or Altarian ship. The term "swarm" refers to the tendency of large numbers of ships to appear as soon as one encounters something interesting.
The swarms have to date been encountered primarily in the Milky Way's core region and the Tarantula nebula, both areas with extremely energetic streamspaces. Their ships will attempt to disassemble any non-swarm metallic object that passes near them; the careful nature of the disassembly suggests resource gathering rather than aggression. Experiments with metallic asteroids dropped into swarm space have yielded similar results, but such studies have been suspended when the freighter Argonautica miscalculated an exit jump and was subsequently disassembled. In spite of their association with highly active streamspaces, "deactivated" Asimov ships have been found adrift at various points in the Milky Way, including drifting out of void sectors - without the hull deterioration that should be expected.
Syndicate vessels have been observed engaging and defeating swarms, but their motivations are unknown. Most of what is known about swarm ships comes from analysis of these wrecks. The vessels consist of what appears to be a highly dense nanomechanical strata with little internal specialization, though nanocomponents have been seen to cluster together in an apparently ad hoc fashion. The "hull" is little more than a dense exterior layer reinforced with some form of self-replicating polymer. Detailed analysis is complicated because wrecked ships rapidly disintegrate - an event often preceded by other swarm craft jumping in for salvage operations. While swarm-on-swarm violence has never been observed, these wrecks are fair game.
Spoiler: Observers
Completing the trinity of inscrutable aliens is a race of blue-skinned humanoids from deep in the Norma-Cygnus arm of the Milky Way. How they survived historical Altarian aggression is something of an enigma, as they have few dedicated warships. They are called the Observers, for their own name for themselves is twenty-seven syllables long and unpronounceable to terrans. Worryingly, they are capable of mimicking terran speech and languages, and have been able to do so since first contact.
Observers are often sighted watching over events they find interesting without actively intervening, hence their name. While these events include major battles, technological developments, diplomatic meetings, and so on, they also include seemingly meaningless events like routine business deals, minor police actions, and apolitical social functions. They will sometimes participate in other cultures, but always with an eye towards watching them - a fact which they make no secret of. While they are generally open and cheerful, they will not talk about their own origins, and asking about their motivations always produces a cryptic "we observe".
Observers are around a meter tall and have skin in varying shades of blue and purple, but otherwise superficially resemble androgynous humans or elves. Coincidentally, the similarity extends to their external reproductive organs - which some have been known to have fun with.
Regions:
Spoiler: Milky Way
Starstream distances are highly nonlinear. To this end, the Unity divides the Milky Way galaxy into "sectors", groups of systems with many contact points such that direct jumps between most systems within the sector are possible. Movement between sectors is tricky, and only possible at the marked points where their streamspaces contact each other. Sector divisions are political as well as navigational, but culture can still vary wildly within a sector.
The Unity has a nearly complete monopoly on habitable space in the Orion and Sagittarius arms. They have some holdings in the Perseus arm, but the majority has been claimed as Defiance space. Norma-Cygnus and Scutum-Crux are populated by Altarian tribes, and the Altarians have some colonies embedded within Unity and Defiance space as well. More aggressive Altarian fleets have been known to make direct jumps into Sagittarius to raid.
Triangulum is theoretically directly accessible from the galactic core. However, the core has an extremely active streamspace, and the bodies of explorers can't long handle the pressure. Furthermore, the mysterious automated ships of the so-called Asimov swarm prowl the area and will aggressively disassemble any explorer ships they encounter. As such, the galactic core is extremely hazardous, and labeled with the modern-day equivalent of "Here Be Dragons".
Spoiler: Andromeda
The Andromeda galaxy can consistently be reached from the Milky Way at three points: two in the Orion Arm and one in Perseus. At these "Andromeda gates", the streamspaces of the two galaxies is close enough for safe transit. Other gates are intermittently available. The Unity has made colonization attempts in Andromeda, but the distance makes any sort of law enforcement difficult and the colonies are mostly independent. Pirate incursions through intermittent gates is a chronic hazard of space travel, prompting Unity fleets into periodic suppressive action. The Andromeda colonies are nearly lawless; piracy, slavery, and gang activity (planet-bound and otherwise) are rampant, but Andromeda society somehow muddles by anyway. Typical Unity ideas of the area are highly romanticized, and more than one governmental VIP has met their end deciding to vacation in Andromeda.
Spoiler: The Magellanic clouds
Both Magellanic clouds are densely populated by the brilliant white ships and installations of the Magellanic Syndicate. These aliens rarely acknowledge any ships outside of their own species - except to fiercely defend their own colonies and habitats from anything that approaches them. As such, aside from a few Unity scientific outposts, there is little formal activity by any other faction in these galaxies - but rumors persist of uncharted contact points used as getaways by rebels, pirates, and others with reason to hide. Access is otherwise available by the Magellanic stream, a causeway of ionized gases linking the Magellanics and the Milky Way proper.
One noteworthy area of the Magellanics is the Tarantula nebula. Like the Milky Way's core, it expresses an extremely energetic streamspace and Asimov ships, hinting at another link with Triangulum. Syndicate ships have been observed intentionally engaging Asimov ships in battle, and most Unity insight into both of these species comes from analysis of the resultant wrecks.
Spoiler: Triangulum
The Triangulum galaxy is, at present, inaccessible. Mathematical modeling suggests a contact point in the galactic core of the Milky Way, but the local streamspace approaches maelstrom-level intensities and marauding Asimov swarms inhibit access even further. The same conditions are present in the Tarantula nebula in the Magellanic clouds. As such, Triangulum is a cherished enigma, the subject of both theoretical treatises and popular fiction. One tantalizing hypothesis suggests that it may link to even further galaxies. Another suggests that the Milky Way's streamspace energy may simply be spillover from Triangulum - or, perhaps, that the relationship is reversed, and we are simply a tributary. It is also suspected that the Asimov swarms may have merged from these contact points, but conclusive evidence is so far lacking.
Spoiler: The Unity in detail
Spoiler: Species
The contemporary Unity encompases four species, all native to Earth.
Humans are the shortest-lived of the four. With proper medical care, they can reach an age of around 130 years; further extension is possible, but unpopular due to decreasing quality of life. They are also the most numerous, as they reach sexual maturity faster than the others and have a faster gestation period. Humans tend to be more adaptable than their fellow terrans, a result of the same evolutionary adaptations that gives them such relatively short lives.
Elves are sometimes called humanity's sister race, as the two have a close relationship, evolutionary speaking. They naturally live to their 160s and can live to be 200 with contemporary medical care. Elves have a natural affinity for magic, which gives them their extended life spans, as well as a certain intuitive sense that has been scientifically determined to be more accurate than that of other species. Elves are smaller than humans on average and have a delicate bone structure that makes them more dexterous at the cost of some fragility to physical injury. Elvish vision is relatively weak, but their ears are phenomenally complex and capable of detecting and localizing sound a human or dwarf never could.
Dwarves diverged from the human/elf line significantly earlier, and as such are quite different from either. They were a predatory species, hunting in small packs with tactics quite unlike human pursuit predation. While they have developed further since then, the dwarvish brain has retained its affinities for tactical thinking and for tool use. A typical dwarf stands a little over a meter tall, but weighs almost as much as a human - primarily from muscle mass. Their lifespans are naturally around a century, or a century and a half with modern science.
Orcs are the final Unity species. They are tall, burly humanoids, often with green or grey skin and over-developed teeth. Orcs tend to have a spiritual bent and often come at problems from surprising angles, but may seem slow-witted in daily life. Orcish spellcasters are rare, but those that there are tend to have exotic abilities that are hard for others to master.
Interbreeding between terran races is possible with proper technological assistance, but this is not a decision to make lightly, as mixed offspring typically suffer from a variety of developmental abnormalities and are usually infertile. Humans and elves tend to produce the healthiest offspring, with sensory difficulties as the most common complication. Theoretically, a fairy should be able to breed with any of the Unity races, but this is very rare given their political status.
Spoiler: History
Terran space exploration dates as far back as the 20th century, initially using repurposed naval ship hulls given atmosphere through careful spellcraft and brought into orbit through the combined efforts of many teleportation specialists. The technology was, however, regarded as an expensive waste without any practical application - until the Soviet cruiser Krasnyi Krym was launched into orbit at the height of the Cold War, armed with kinetic kill vehicles and placed on a path that would take the ship directly over Washington, DC, ostensibly motivated by fear of the American Strategic Defense Initiative. The result was a period of frantic orbital deployments and research into countermeasures on both sides of the Cold War, and while neither side was willing to commit to an actual attack for fear of retaliation, the sky filled up alarmingly quickly with weapons ships and interceptors.
Into this turbulent time stepped Brynja Sophusdóttir, a gifted mage and naval clerk-turned-statesman. In a feat of diplomacy far above her station, she brought about the formation of an international task force drawing upon the resources of neutral nations and devoted to eradicating the existential threat these ships represented. "Brynja's Brigade", as it became known, was made space-ready and teleported into orbit with alarming rapidity - it is widely assumed that she was supplied with the relevant spells by defectors from one or both belligerents. The Cold War orbital platforms stood little change against her dedicated ship-to-ship combatants, equipped with precision torpedoes and crewed by the finest military spellcasters of multiple nations, and quickly surrendered.
Brynja then gave an order that would forever change the shape of international relations and establish her as a folk hero for generations to come. Acting upon her own edict, she ordered the capture of the USS Iowa and threatened to turn her kinetics upon major population centers on both Cold War powers if they did not take immediate and irreversible steps towards nuclear disarmament. Both nations, exhausted of constant existential fear, complied. The task force would remain in orbit for many, many years as a deterrent before voluntarily giving way to the United Nations Orbital Service in the early 21st century, by which point proper spacecraft had been developed.
These events contributed two things essential to the next phase of Terran history: a large collection of space-worthy hulls and a certain Devil-may-care attitude regarding survival - after all, people had come to accept the continual presence of armed warships in Earth orbit; the possibility of sudden annihilation from space made other risks pale by comparison.
The mechanics of starstream transit were discovered by accident. While the theoretical underpinnings of streamspace had been understood for centuries, any attempts to directly interact with it so far had led only to the messy death of the mage making the attempt. In the mid-21st century, an elf by the name of Alexis Lightweaver, frustrated while working on his Ph.D thesis by the indirect sorts of observations he was limited to making, designed a mechanism to send a probe into the starstream directly. The implications of what he'd just done dawned on him only after the probe returned - burning at several hundred degrees centigrade and warped beyond all recognition, for he hadn't quite solved for a shield spell correctly, but it did return. He quickly abandoned his academic work and founded a company to perfect and market the device to various space agencies - and when he retired in the 23rd century, it was to Aldebaran. Terran carelessness had brought them to the stars, and they stopped for nothing.
This expansion was not peaceful. The entire Terran interstellar industry had come into existence almost overnight, and even as Terran society pushed outwards it collapsed from within. No one understood the logistics of so large a culture, and no one could stop it. The old nations-states were forgotten in favor of increasingly numerous private militias, and interfaction violence, piracy, and the old existential fear became the norm.
From this chaos would rise a charismatic military leader hellbent on stopping it. His true name has been lost to history; he styled himself as the heir of Brynja Sophusdóttir, and recalling her style of gunship diplomacy, set out to reunite the warring Terran blocs by any means necessary. His message appealed to the young, who felt they had nothing else to look for; but also to the old, especially of the longer-lived races, who remembered how things had been. The latter would be Brynja II's advisors; the former, his soldiers. He stormed production facilities and drydocks to mass-produce weapons; he offered his enemies a choice between subservience or destruction. His Unity began increasingly to resemble a theocratic cabal with himself as the messiah figure, and they fought with utter devotion and terrifying effectiveness. A combination of high-end equipment, good logistics, inflammatory rhetoric, and luck allowed him to build his united society.
It must be understood that, as violent as this movement was, it was utopic compared to other power blocs at the time. All in all, the wars that formed the Unity cost a little under half a million lives. The self-styled Brynja II preferred to capture enemy assets and reeducate their crews - who had often served their previous commanders out of fear to begin with, and were more than willing to defect to someone a little less brutal. Civilian casualties were an unfortunate consequence of his methods for ensuring planetary dominance, but he would spent considerable resources rebuilding them afterward. Compared to contemporary societies, the Unity's rhetoric of being the chosen heroes had considerable justification.
This society would remain stable for most of two centuries, but from the top down, they were becoming increasingly theocratic. Brynja, both the actual one and her self-styled heir, were regarded like divine figures, and the Unity navy began to resemble an inquisition. The position of ship's navigator was at this point occupied almost exclusively by the fey, for the job came naturally to them; and the personal theologies so popular among the fey races were in sharp contrast to this new attitude of the Unity. Individual fairies began to refuse to do their jobs. This was met with swift retribution, which only served to spread the idea further.
And so began the Fey Defiance. Shortly before the Unity's 200th anniversary, open warfare again marred her space. This was not the careful warfare of its birth, focused on winning the hearts and minds of the enemy; the Unity had forgotten that subtlety. Casualties ran into the millions on both sides; the fey's commandeering of whatever vessels they could get their hands on disrupted the Unity economy and logistics and crippled services like medical care, disaster relief, and critical supply shipments to border colonies, and the Unity didn't hesitate to destroy any ship that seemed to be siding with them. If the Unity had been born in fire, the fey tore themselves out with a supernova.
And then they were gone, and the war was over. A period of intense introspection followed. The idea of Unity-as-perfect-society had been forever torn asunder - the death toll saw to that. They could barely provide basic services for their own people. For the first time in centuries, Terran space shrank. People died.
The Unity would eventually emerge from this crisis intact but forever changed. Gone was the theocratic central government, the dictates from on high about how to act and speak and dress and think. Gone was the insistence of uniformity. Above all, gone was the idea that any one culture could ever be perfect. People were different; they could never fit the same mold. In its place was a radically confederate society, one where every world, every planet and moon and habitat, was free to determine for itself what it should be, provided that it did not impinge on its neighbors. While shadowy blacks ops groups would later come into existence to protect against the worst interpretations of this idea, this basic structure has remained intact for a millennium.
For other major events in the Unity's history, see the references for the Altarian tribes and Andromeda.
Spoiler: Culture
Unity culture is extraordinarily heterogeneous. The cultural differences between sectors is often shocking, and there is often little uniformity even within a sector. This relates to their hands-off style of government, massive territory, and relative lack of internal travel barriers: most individuals can easily find a world with social and cultural systems corresponding to their own desires. Some philosophers speculate that the Unity has become a galactic macroorganism, a society that has evolved extremely specialized structures in a process akin to natural selection, and in doing so has come to live up to its name in a profound way. Such people tend to regard the corruption and infighting that plagues it as no more objectionable than an biological organism metabolizing exhausted cells, or the actions of an immune system. This attitude has been summarized as individualism in service of the common good: that given the proper structure, any individual's desires can serve the totality of society, no matter how abhorrent they may be close up.
This view is highly controversial.
Spoiler: Politics
Generally speaking, the Unity's core systems are philosophically inclined, very wealthy, and socially complex. To call them corrupt would be an understatement, but also to miss the point: the intricate power structures of these systems has built a functioning society, one in which every component is interdependent on each other in a tangled web that no one fully understands and which cannot be easily disentangled. This is a diluted form of the theocratic tendencies the early Unity had, which still persists in these places. Sol is still the seat of the Unity's government, and change is slow. That ambitious individuals can game the system is hardly a secret, but regarded as a positive: the system is so entangled that, if such a person injures others on their rise to power, they will cut themselves off from the same power they seek; on the other hand, anyone who manages to understand the system in enough detail to manipulate it without hurting people is likely an effective leader. This region has a particular aesthetic style emphasizing elaborate ornamentation, sometimes at the expense of functionality - but as any pirate who's tried to prey on a core-sector cruise liner can vouch for, sometimes decoration has a practical purpose, too.
The sectors surrounding the core retain some of that social complexity, but exchange the elegant system of interrelationships for brutal capitalism and class strife. This is where the Unity's heavy industry is localized, with opportunistic businesspeople making (and losing) fortunes on their ability to guess at the core sectors' behavior in the near future. Many of these sectors have legal slavery - especially of orcs, whose physical strength makes them highly desired, but elves are also popular slaves for their intellectual abilities. The desires of the core are the driving force here, mediated by economies of scale: colossal factories, especially spaceborne installations, mass-produce starships, computers, and industrial equipment, as well as commodities like food, clothing, and other daily staples. These products then trickle down to other sectors further from the core. To the Unity-as-macroorganism theorists, this region is therefore analogous to a spinal column, mediating between the desires of the core systems/the brain and the rest of the Unity/the body.
Further out, the Unity is a patchwork with little overall structure. Most worlds tend to focus on a small number of industries; focus on a particular industry clumps up or spreads apart depending on economic needs. Most sectors will have at least some factory worlds or installations, some of which approach the brutality of the outer core - but others mimic the gentle elegance of the inner core, or have elaborate social programs in place to ensure fair treatment of workers. The only consistency is that sectors with contact points with multiple others are amazingly ecumenical trade hubs, brimming with tourists, travelers, explorers, and criminals.
Spoiler: Military
The Unity's military is more centralized than its economics and culture. It is divided into three main branches: Internal Affairs, External Affairs, and the Experimental Technologies Bureau.
Internal Affairs is responsible for internal security, counterintelligence, and counterinsurgency at the sector level and above. IA units range from regular military forces deployed against rebellions to police and anti-piracy task forces to dedicated black ops units that don't officially exist. They deploy readily in response to a wide range of threats, which both cuts down on overhead - if the same unit can both manage customs duty and provide fire support in a shooting war, for example, fewer units need be maintained - and provides a convenient smoke screen for black ops. To facilitate this, they divide their fleet into flexible battlegroups, each consisting of a command carrier, one or two subordinate carriers, and a wide range of and smaller craft organized in an ad hoc manner as the group commander sees fit. This permits a quick detachment of whatever sized force is warranted by a threat situation. The IA also maintains a courier fleet, responsible for delivering important supplies and, critically, news across the Unity. Given the Unity's perpetual state of revolt, it should be hardly surprising that these postal vessels are as heavily armed as any frontline IA unit. The IA tends to be the first to get their hands on new technologies, both for logistical reasons and because novelty is highly valued in combating criminal activity.
External Affairs is the IA's outward-facing cousin. They monitor contact points with hostile space and guard against incursions through them, occasionally conducting raids and harassment attacks of their own to suppress hostile force buildups. EA's organization mirrors that of the IA, facilitating joint operations, but their battlegroups are more consistently organized with their supporting craft organized into a consistent two-level hierarchy. EA ships tend to lag a year or two behind their IA equivalents. The UN-CA Trafalgar is an example of an EA warship.
The Experimental Technologies Bureau is responsible for designing new warships and operating them during OpEval. They work closely with IA's black ops teams on all manner of projects.
Spoiler: Religion
There are three major religions with some presence on most worlds. The most successful is a sort of neo-pantheism, claiming that the universe is a conscious entity and evaluates people based on what they make of their lives; its adherents call themselves Universalists and value both invention and honest interpersonal actions.
The second is simply called the Way, and asserts that all conscious life is connected in some mysterious and anachronistic way. To a Wayist, the past and future are no different than events on another planet, or a room on the other side of an opaque wall: to say that history does not exist is to say that a room does not exist if you don't occupy it, and the future is simply history as yet unrevealed. While Wayists believe in connections between all people, family relations are the strongest because of how influential they are - and idolization for the same reason. The same religion can justify both conservative attitudes through ancestor worship, or radical self-determination through devotion to some historical figure. Every individual Wayist must decide for themselves, considering their personal situation and connections. Some scholars argue that Universalist thought emerged as an attempt to simplify the Way. Some Wayists report encountering ancestors, friends, or even descendants in their dreams, and the scientific evidence suggests that this may be plausible - if overreported.
Still others look back at the past as an inspiration for modern religion. Historical religions tended to hit on similar themes, and some contemporary thinkers wonder if this hints at some underlying truth. They seek to identify common archetypal deities that may exist somewhere, possibly in streamspace, possibly in Triangulum or maelstroms, and while this movement is still too small to have a canonical name, it has been attracting increasing numbers of people.
Honorable mention should go to behemoth cults, disparate groups who claim particular friendship with one of the beasts - often after being rescued from a space wreck by one. Novel translation magic is often developed by these groups as they seek deeper communications with their "friends". While behemoths are widely thought unintelligent, or so vastly alien as to be mutually incomprehensible, it is unquestionable that these individuals change after their encounters with them - and usually for the better.
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