Wernher

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

What map?

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

@6slyboy6

I think you overfocus on the presence of Lucretia and Konev's attitude on xenos. For the former, it was Hotch's idea and project, Konev adopted it at his insistence and politically to first, make himself seem more open to aliens and second, to make the aliens hate Lucretia and the Crayvens, give them a sense that they are all alone wanting to rebel not only humans but other aliens put them down.

For Konev, he rarely speaks to his alien general and almost always ignores her advices if he evens allow her to speak, giving her thankless and boring assignments while leaving the fame for himself and the humans. Certainly he wouldn't parade around his general and in fact, he'd be dismissive of her at best. Though I guess other admirals could badmouth him, just because.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

@6slyboy6 Y u no post military?!

Also, think Admiral Konev could have some relationship with any of your peeps? Child prodigy commander of all fleets maybe.

Or maybe with his actually competent subordinate admiral Stern. Likewise maybe Miller and Hotch could have worked together before, even share some views about humanity growing soft, though I can't imagine Miller agreeing with Hotch's idea of looking for solutions among aliens.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

Whats the status of nobility in the empire?

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

@6slyboy6 Not really relevant in Konev's mind. The aim is to provide an extra punch to his fleet without having to beg high command for every ship he gets. Those just warp in, launch their missiles and warp out of combat. Alternatively, they're big mine layers. Guns on them are mostly just for interception purposes, it takes more than just a stray missile or fighter to explode their pods before they fire.

Speaking of that, what kind of fleet should a Grand Admiral like him expect to have?

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

-Missile Frigate: The Crayven forces are in theory not supposed to produce combat vessels, after months of delays and supplies being on back order, Admiral Konev took it on himself to command the construction of 'alternative combat means'. For single launch missile carriers are considered to technically be anti-fortress support equipment and not combat ships. By that logic... why not strap as many missile to a basic space worthy hunk of metal?

-Avalanche Class Missile Carrier: Konev only had a few dockyards to produce ships but as many factories as he wanted to produce missiles... so why not stuff more missiles on a ship? At 500 missiles per pod, the Avalanche can fire an overwhelming 6000 missiles at once, more than enough to overwhelm any defense screens! These are quite basic though, with just enough computing power to track targets independently and maintain distance as not to cause chain detonations. Still, the first time he deployed this beast in a wargame against Grand Admiral Wayland, he simulated the destruction of half of a fleet, showing that throwing numbers rather than quality worked as well in space as it did on the ground.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

Incoming psionic mumbo jumbo. Does this even make sense?

-Isz
The older races can tell that somehow, the Crayvens have changed from how they were before. Oh certainly, they always were the impatient short lived and determined insectoids they are, but before there was a passion to them that has been seemingly replaced with cold and unfeeling motions ever since they were almost genocided. How could they know the truth behind this though, alien as it is. Something that once was common knowledge to every Crayven is now lost to time, the fact that like a human lives with the bacteria on his skin, the Crayvens had a symbiotic relation with creatures from another plane of existence called the Isz people or rather, the things. The human word for an Isz was as none recall, a soul.

Living on their plane of existence, the Collective Consciousness or the Ithyll, 'Dreamland' as it was commonly called, the Isz lived on islands in the middle of a churning sea, the islands being the mind of the Crayvens 'Bellow' as the beings referred to the material plane. They were the source of unexplainable visions and thoughts as well as of a telepathic link between the members of the species for while the insectoids aren't expressive in the slightest and really never were, they could say 'I like this person' after a handshake due to what served as their subconscious interacting in the Ithyll.

Great events in one realm could impact the other profundly however and at no time was this more evident than when the Crayvens reached the end of their resources, being unable to continue their exponential population growth. The Isz breed at about the same speed as the Crayvens without concerns for food and space but the minds available to host them so when there was no minds to receive them, newborns were forced to 'drown' in the void, dissipate without a mind of their own, to fight for new minds. It was all very stressful for the Crayvens, insuring generations born in periods of misery were destine to be highly stressed and extremely paranoid. The desire for the Isz in their minds to find a solution to their overpopulation traducing itself to the Crayvens, in the material plane, becoming restless and looking for a change, though they couldn't put their fingers on what.

It was why the Crayvens were doomed to forever try and find room to grow, at the expense of everyone else. Contraception and birth control to make their empires more stable were doomed to fail, the Ithyll demanded permanent expansion!

So then, what happened?

Over a century ago, the Crayven race was brought to near extinction and all that was left was a single individual, a single mind, a single island in the Dreamworld. The Crayvens could repopulate, but that one Isz could not for unlike his host, the being's reproductive system was binary. Without at least one other Isz in existence, it could do nothing to repopulate the now once again fertile Ithyll of the Crayvens mind.

-Stelaz
The notion of time and space as the material plane knows it is foreign to the Isz who lived a single moment, it was probably why they were unable to control their own population and forced the constant doom of the Crayvens, but with this moment filled with emptiness, the last survivor, Stelaz, decided to delve in search of what had caused this. No Isz had been aware of the material realm more than the Crayvens had been of the Ithyll before, it was all a vague sort of thing that only rare gurus had the desire to explore. They could felt it was linked but couldn't see what was happening to the other side. It was with great effort that Stelaz managed to pierce the veil and look at the eldritch material world. The being took the energy needed to find the spot of land, the mind that would suit the best its efforts to make contact and thus found what was Lucretia.

At first Stelaz was just an instinct, a feeling. Eventually, it became more than that and began to understand the nature of the place it had found itself. It and Lucretia communicated and during those nights, they both learned as much as each other on the other side and slowly formed a bond as both gained more knowledge of the other plane and learned how events in one affected the other.

Stelaz never knew the Emperor of mankind, he is just a weird form in the aether seen through the mind of Lucretia, but he knows he is the reason he was left alone. That he was part of the churning sea that boiled endlessly around him and that through the physical world, he could end him.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

@6slyboy6

Well, to kill rebellious humans to be fair, and only after he was requested to intervene and merely succeeded where others thought he'd fail. Konev would be pretty vocal about how his only crime is to be too competent for his own good and openly mock anyone who brings up this incident by saying 'I guess they should have sent you, the man for the job, to lose the battle.'

But I'll obey your word, O game master.

Meanwhile, I'm working for a little edit for my sheet, news on that later.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

Btw @6slyboy6, @Sophrus. My proposition was actually serious, considering how possibly dangerous that place would be, why not send some expendable forces and a (kinda) reputed grand admiral to watch over it?

Either Konev does a good job and that's that, or he fails spectacularly and the other Admirals can watch his downfall with glee!

I think it would make for interesting roleplay really.

This galaxy isn't yours! (On hiatus)

@Sophrus I vote admiral Konev and his xenos lol.