The RP should have a official thread by tomorrow. For now feel free to discuss your factions and make apps.

With the map program I settled on a spherical sector with 1500 star systems.

I will [i]not[/i] be using the finer parts of the editor, just political affiliation and the FTL lanes. The lore for each system i'll just have players define and put in the notes box for each star system.

All you need to tell me is the system count you want, the lane color you want and where you want to be positionally.

For anyone who will ask why I wont, it comes down to me just not seeing it as worth the effort. I wanna RP, not spend thirty minutes trying to figure out the orbital inclination of Zovorgidas 7

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Also I made my app sheet. It lacks pics since I haven't drawn a puppet Master yet or made a symbol for them. I'll likely make a species sheet too.

Faction [contains nomadic fleets, empires and secret isolated protectorates as well]

Name: The Puppet Masters

Type: Hyper Nomadics

System of Government:

Puppet Masters, few as they are powerful, have come to accept a system of government based around manipulation in order to achieve their goals. They assume a general sense of domination over other civilizations. In effect they see everywhere they are as "in their control" despite not dictating the rules, annexing worlds or improving on the region.

Instead they keep control of their domains through manipulation of individuals and associating with proxies in order to "keep stability through chaos". Societies that are large, innovative and expansive tend to get their attention more than other societies.

The puppet masters are not a united entity, rather they are a massive multitude of tiny groups that wander around collecting information "of their dominion" and have been known to come into conflict over contradicting actions taken to cause chaos in a "potential threat".

Despite all that they're rather rare and generally do not have any effect on the typical basis of things.

Species contained: 

Many species that are weird and too obscure to depict, however the puppet masters have become in recent times one with their spaceships.

History:

Once upon a time lost to history there was an ancient interstellar empire known simply as the Ecumene. It was a very prosperous and near utopian empire; one that was said to have stretched thousands, if not millions of star systems and kept stability despite the constant terror that beheld them from their expansion.

However this period of prosperity, where hundreds of races were said to have worked together for the grand purpose of making a truly galactic community things started to degenerate. Factions within the dominion grew and secretly, and slowly undermined the ways and traditions that kept the Ecumene in its uphill prosperity slowly, but surely started to wear down the wave of civilization that rocked the cosmos. 

The internal damage got progressively worse, and the Ecumene eventually traumatically disunited, the stability and order than once governed society for vast periods of time reduced to a mess of squabbling factions who lost track of what made the Ecumene great.

However, this was only the start of a disaster that would only spiral progressively worse.

For Ecumene was not alone in the cosmic fugue- it had enemies it kept down and away for so long, now they took their opportunity to strike at the Ecumene. Massive invasions and wars on scales incomprehensible broke out, and continued in a perpetual, almost ritualistic manner as titans crashed into each other, smashing apart the foundations of civilization forged over vast sums of time in a matter of centuries. Entire species being systematically erased from the face of the universe, plagues and super weapons unleashed that eradicated entire sectors of civilization in one burst- in was the end times.

 The Eon of Sunshineit has been called, due to all the gamma ray burst based WMDs used. Thankfully such destructive weapon was lost with those who used them.

The end result of the eon of horrors would not only be the fall of the Ecumene, but a dark age in which societies degenerated back to the stone age slowly and painfully or marauding crooks with advanced technology went about forging little space empires in the corpse of the Ecumene.

After some time the chaos cooled down, but technological innovation ceased and in many ways went back ward. Societies rose and fell in the space once in the Ecumene, but the flame of the Ecumene would seem to be forever extinguished.

There was for 20,000 years a weak neo-Ecumene that formed around 50,000 – 30,000 years ago that looked like it was going to reclaim its lost glory, but the lack of resources in the region and lack of ability to reclaim the technologies from the ancient Ecumene that once ruled caused it to come and go like any civilization, but this neo-Ecumene did contribute to the Puppet Masters and their spread, as the puppet masters derive themselves from a cult that formed in the neo-Ecumene and spread to the far reaches of space as they got persecuted for their ideals of nomadism and indirect domination.

As a result the Puppet Masters, as they became called due to their puppetering ways spread across much the galaxy. However number wise they are very thin, lack the ability to reproduce much and lack any ability to innovate any further with their current technology. Despite all these problems, the puppet masters believe their system to be on the slow rise- one day perhaps remaking a new Ecumene of a nature better fit to running a galaxy. However, as time marched as and the Puppet Masters became more isolated ideological difference became more increasing different to the point where quite a few “puppet” masters have become very different in nature to the point where if someone wanted to make a hyper nomad with a shared history whose nomadic ideology was near completely different they could.

Also note that while they are unable to innovate, the cultural markings and technologies they utilize does vary with what ideology they follow and what technologies they see best suited to carrying out their goals. The splinter of puppet masters that reached the sector the Cosmic Community takes place is very, very far from home and has only been around for 3,000 years, a timescale which is not much time for a puppet master. 

Despite that, they intend to control from the void and manipulate however they see to best and their presence in the sector cosmic community takes place in is very evident, perhaps too much so...

[[Any further history from this point on will require folk to have as associates]]

Technological capabilities:

All technology the puppet masters use has been in use as long as they can rmemeber. The technology they use to them it is rather mundane in the same way that you may see a car or toilet paper mundane. 

Make of what you will, as I list off the technologies most relevant.

For one, they’re biologically immortal and can pretty much appear wherever they want to as any form in any space as something that is best described as a sentient hallucination as they can fade away and don’t get detected on the scanners.

They can subconsciously hack into systems and get information they want very quickly; hiding stuff from them is only feasible with stuff like paper, any files kept on a online source or archive is bound to be cracked by them sooner or later.

Their conventional weapons are in a sense "death pulses" waves of varying frequency that can cause those targeted by the weapon to wither away. Energy shields tend to help to some level, but the weapon saps heavily on energy as well. There's variants that shoot waves and spheres instead of streams as well. They can and will give a associate a hand weapon that shoots death pulses; but if the associates do something with the weapon the puppet masters do not like, the weapon will crumble apart in their hands.

They're also rather liberal when it comes to using anti-matter based bombs and missiles. They can and will give some of this tech to a associate.

Their FTL is as fast as the limit I allow for the RP is; they can travel across the sector in around 8 years.

Despite all the technological wonders, it must be noted that stuff like space craft are very, very hard to replace as they have no access to manufacturers so every spaceship of theirs destroyed is a spaceship that can’t be replaced for over a century.

Also, the puppet masters are the spaceship.

Other: They're pretty much inspired by a certain classic metal song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xnKhsTXoKCI

I tried my best to keep them balanced; they're very low in numbers, can't innovate/have a very hard time making more of themsleves and generally must rely on indirect means of power.

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