The Gobacks were originally two distraught corporate CEOs that fled the Orionic empire for 'flying to close to the sun' and aimed to discover the rotten underlying of the empire. These persons, resourceful and made immortal by uploading their minds in computers, did quite well for themselves, building a small empire of asteroids and planetoids used to fuel the construction of a dyson sphere and then matrioshka brain to live in hedonistic simulations. The empire didn't care to send pursuers most of the time but eventually, civilian ships began to cross the Gateway. Hundreds, thousands, millions of them! The empire had fallen. The duo found it amusing, they had survived their oppresors! And they allowed the refugees to settle the planets near their domain and found new interest in reality. A loose league of nations, individuals and corporations has formed and they feel now is the time to, as their name imply, Go Back and find the truth they sought... and have some fun along the way.




The 'Governing' of the exiles is a complicated affair if there is even such a thing in the first place. No doubt at the top they are a certain 'Duarchy', a rule of two as Erika and Edward (most of time the later), through their super AI slave Keo, have both the biggest stick in the form of centuries of defense platforms and other mechanism, but also the biggest carrots to entice people to do as they are ordered in the wish to gain immortality and enhancements through the vast cybernetic knowledge of these 3.

Afterward however, things get muddy. There are no laws, or at least no universal laws in exile space. It is simply anarchy (or as Edward would describe it, 'Laissez-Faire Libertarianism') and the rule of strength. As the unofficial motto of Exile space says, the Weak will suffer what they must and the Strong will do what they can. This forces people to group themselves in cabals, corporations and tiny nation states of heavily armed individuals that negotiate with one another to trade goods and services. In certain places this makes living a pure hell but surprisingly in others, this makes for an extremely functional and efficient society where people are careful to act in an ethic and way that won't provoke others to slaughter them. In the Orionic lands a lot of individuals are only alive because its illegal to put a bullet in their brain, there is no such thing in Exile space.


The Sutherland Corporation was one of the most powerful entity in Imperial Space in its days, valued in the trillions, employees in the billions with projects of stellar engineering and deploying the first universal servant robots for the middle class, promissing a future free of work for all humans, the rest to be left to machines and aliens. But as the Emperor himself would have said back then, the man and his wife were beginning to think and act out of their status as mere merchants. They had a passing interest in archeology, something that allowed people like them to have collections dwarfing that of most museums, and were particularly keen on old earth artifacts. They noticed however that some things simply didn't make sense, even in the timeline there was a lot wrong and that didn't make any sense.

At this point they had dug to deep.

But the Sutherlands weren't people without resources and with such a large empire to scour to find them, the two of them had more than enough time to make a stealthy exit in the Gateway to the Abyss as their little commercial empire collapsed around them, sending the empire in an economic crisis for a time even. The Gateway was part of a privately sponsored effort to colonize the other side of the galaxy as explorers had dragged its sister gate all the way there but with the Sutherland Corporation gone, it became unclear what to do with this. It was seized by the empire, then left there, used illegally, sold, weathered the collapse but all the while probes never came back so it was just ignored.

At least until the collapse. Then, people were desperate and not knowing where to go, took their luck in this portal, not knowing its reputation as they wanted to flee. Keo would normally have destroyed intruders but these weren't probes. It thus advized its masters who decided to allow these refugees to settle the few planets that could sustain life close by their stellar constructs (anyways planets were seen as annoying due to their gravity, much easier to mine asteroids). It wasn't really out of kindness though, truth was a thousand years being gods in a simulation had gotten boring. Mortals, real sentient beings, were much more interesting! And for 300 years this was pretty much an interesting reality show, see them struggle and fight each other...

...but even that got boring after a while. No, it was time to have a more active role and do something the two of them had on the back of their mind for a while now. Always the aim to find the truth and what the heck the Empire hid about its own history was something they thought off but never considered possible. Sure, they had at their command an AI controlling millions of drones but what was this in front of half the goddamn galaxy being thrown at them?! But in front of a divided group of psychos of all breeds at each other's throat this seemed more doable.

At least it would be interesting and if they failed, they could always seal the gate and live in peace, right?



Space

Weapons and systems:
-Gamma Pulsar: Laser bream in wavelength of gamma rays. In addition of producing damages equivalent to other laser systems, produces a significant EMP effect on impact and has devastating effect on organic matter, being crew members or biotech based ships (on the later, self repair systems will be quite prone to defects insuring cancerous growth on the ship hulls and lost of efficiency.
-Alchemic Beam: A short range energy weapon that accelerates entropy and quantum tunneling. Created as an industrial tool to try and transmute matter in other elements, it was found useless as it could only transmute things in Iron-56. Still, this weapon is useful to go through composite armors, changing the plates in much less resilient iron.
-Diffusing gas: A tactical tool of various use, missiles containing this was are use to spread it between friendly and enemy formations, its effect being to diffuse light to some degrees, thus making long range laser weaponry less potent for both sides.
-Atomic Cover: Nuclear weapons in space are of limited use since the missiles needed for delivery can be intercepted, but even if they explode harmlessly, nuclear blasts in space still send a lot of waves of all kind along with a blinding flash that tends to scramble detection equipment. Atomic cover thus consists in sending a wave of missiles that explode before being intercepted to cover another wave that detonates closer and closer and closer, thus engaging in close combat ideally with drones while limiting the enemy's interception range.

-Modular Capital Ships: The Sutherland ships are built in a fashion that they can easily be assembled as well as upgraded simply by removing shielding, communications equipment or power units. Notably, the default structure of the capitals is often similar in the inclusion of a large ship long main weapon, often a 'Gamma Pulsar'. Still, this makes these ships extremely vulnerable to flanking and rear attacks as their auxiliary weapons are mainly point defense, their preferred employment is to aim them at the enemy and then reverse speed as the enemy fleets advance. Said reverse speed is quite considerable actually.

-Siege Guns: Even more specialized ship, these are made to bombard planets and stationary fortresses with heavy kinetic slugs, 'RKV', relativistic kill vehicles that go at a significant fraction of the speed of light, so fast that being able to intercept these slugs would still cause them to break off in lethal shrapnel that may even do more damage. They can fire solid projectiles but also burst rounds at mobile targets that will split in many pellets making a salvo able to destroy fighter wings and if maybe not destroy a ship, cripple its vulnerable sensor arrays and weapons. The 'hilt' it has is actually meters think shielding capable to handle most capital class weapons, making it a bitch to fight when it can just move backward and away but again, easy to destroy if flanked.

-Modular Drones: The bread and butter of Keo, these drones seem unimpressive, bad even as they often have a single optic and specialized weapons. Indeed their deadliness relies on how they are networked to their carrier and are thus able to synchronize perfectly. Having one plasma shield emiter, they will synch with 2 others to form a shield during a single second to intercept a projectile that cannot be dodged before shooting its weapon in conjunction with other drones for maximum effect. The most terrible part to these things is that there are no ends to them, they are incredibly cheap and easily replaced. Their modular nature also insures that while they won't survive a single hit of almost anything with their wet paper armor, generally only one part will be damaged and after the fight, different parts of drones can be recombined to diminish the loses even further. They don't stop coming.

The Edward Doctrine:
The man is not a natural strategist but he was fond of distracting himself with simulated warfare against both Keo and his wife Erika, developing his own set of favored tactics and types of ship. Notably, he has a focus on heavy battleship unloading a massive amount of kinetic power in bold, frontal actions, knowing that the use of physical ammunition force a faster paced 'Gameplay' as he'd call it to win before his own resources are depleted. But still, he is probably the weakest strategist of the 3 and while he is quite capable of dispatching lesser admirals that lack creativity or less disciplined forces that bulk under the pressure of his crushing blows, more creative enemies will find it easy to lead him on into ambush or especially disadvantageous positions. His fleets being entirely unmanned drones, he is quite dependent on 'relay ships' equiped with quantum entanglement communications without which his reaction time is severely hampered. These relays he like to place in exposed but heavily shielded capital ships to lure the enemy to concentrate their fire on these ships while the rest of his fleet pounds them.

The Erika Doctrine:
Her interest in warfare is much less present that Edward's, but her temperament probably makes her better at it than he. Logical and methodical, she knows space is vast and will try to engage on her own terms and defensively if at all possible, preferring to wither down her enemies slowly with very long and tedious warfare, knowing organics tend to need rest and resupplies where her cybernetic and laser focused forces can fight for days and weeks with no problem at all. For her own relay ships, she'd rather keep them away and hidden in places she'd be quite surprised to see found.

The Keo Doctrine:
The AI itself. While Keo may play nice with its masters, fighting them to entertain them rather than winning, it will not give the same courtesy to its enemies. A generally crushing advantage she has is her processing power that allows all of her ships to work in perfect synchronicity and her fleet composition shows this. Drone carriers. The carriers themselves are mostly disarmed and serve only as ferry to the drones, millions of strike crafts that together offer very little danger but together form a practically unstoppable swarm. A drone being targeted by enemy fire will have 3 other produce a triangular force field stopping enemy fire and will then strike in unison with thousands of other at a single point in the enemy defense to overwhelm them, facing multi layered defenses with attacks milliseconds apart to penetrate them. In the end, with its ammunitions depleted and structure damaged, the drone will detonate itself on the enemy like a missile, for Keo finds it more convenient to bring in more drones rather than have to rearm them.

The Corsair Doctrine:
The Sutherlands find it amusing to watch others fight on their behest and many exiles are eager to win the favor of their overlords as well as the spoil of pirate actions. Piratery and being an annoyence is indeed what the corsairs excel at as, being avowed individualists, they do not aim to die a glorious death in service of their nation but profit from the situation and will avoid any direct confrontation with any superior forces, instead using any scheme imaginable to raid civilian and logistics targets of all sort and capture weapons to reuse them. That's probably the most annoying thing actually, you can be sure battlefields will be picket clean and might even see relatively undamaged hulls be rearmed and reused against you later.

Planetary:

The Edward Doctrine:
Armored warfare, heavy weapon platforms supported by artillery and air support to smash through the enemy without any subtleties to encircle and destroy the enemy. He is not to be underestimated as this focus on armor and his ability to command troops on a grand scale with ease is daunting, but not unbeatable as a competent commander with forces trained enough not to collapse under pressure can certainly exploit his recklessness.

The Erika Doctrine:
Infiltration in dept. Simply put, Erika sees defeat as her own numbers dwindling and while in space she can keep distance, in land warfare when you attack casualties are unavoidable. Which is why she attacks very little, prefering the enemy to come to her and her layered defense in dept to counter attack when the enemy depletes his resources and quickly stopping when she meets resistance. If she has to take the initiative though, she prefer subtlety. Destroy the enemy communications and kill officers, tunnel under and paradrop above, anything to ignore the enemy strong points.

The Keo Doctrine:
Planets are useless, their gravity too high to allow for efficient mining and construction, but they hold a value to the enemy and so it will use this value to drain the enemy of resources. Carpet bombing of civilian areas, gas, biological weapons, nukes and other weapons, its a game of cat and mouse where Keo brings a bazooka, aiming to destroy anything it can spot even if it makes the planet impossible to live on afterward. Who said tanks couldn't fire thermonuclear warheads?

The Corsair Doctrine:
Well... they won't actually try to fight and win a land war. That'd involve putting a large amount of people with guns on the ground and ask them to charge to their death without these people just saying 'lolno' and leaving. But they can do something the robotic overlords can't do: Infiltrate. In the spying sense. They are organics just like any others and a lot of some... well, criminal expertise in forgery that allows them to get in and once they are in, well. Suitcases with explosives, snipers, prying eyes and ears. It may be bellow Erika and Edward, but Keo is pragmatic and quite willing to place bounties and prices on activities disrupting its enemies' activities.


Edward and Erika come from another time where even then they were rather... different from most. Still, they individually hold more power than any individuals in the galaxy, even Emperors need the administration to do their wills. What motivates them seems to be the need for entertainment really. Battles, wars and politics are entertaining and they do so with little other goals than that. They are not a means to an end, they are the end itself.

And then, there's the rest. The exiles that came after them came from everywhere in the empire and with resentment for the Empire that failed to protect them and in this lawless place they quickly learned that the individual is sovereign and its all about strength. Law in the empire was maintained by the coercive strength of the police and the army and with this gone, you have to be armed enough so that others think stealing your shit isn't worth it. But humans are social animals, they can't do anything all alone and so they have to band together. Small corporations, clans and states of a few miles across formed under the idea that if you can be tolerable enough to everyone around you and do your share of the work, then people will not kill you.

For the 'savage frontier' then, the exile lands are surprisingly polite and careful not to offend anyone in case they have powerful friends and again, in a place where there is no law, all you have to do business is your reputation. Cut throat groups are left on the fringe as no one will associate with them or ally with them, making them easier picking than say, a confederation of polite bakers that offer good quality bread on which people depend. Kill a baker and you suddenly have an army of gun runners against you because A: A baker was married to them and B: They made a deal of free bread for a year if they kill you. Its weird.

Religion exists of course and many groups formed with this as a binding factor and indeed churches are mostly away from the violence if you don't want an army of faithful on your ass, but even then, the exiles have lost faith in higher powers helping them. If not an emperor, then what will and unseen god do?


Unknown. Just... Unknown. No one keeps any census or tab on that. The majority seems human enough though.

Name:
The Bahara Dynasties

Flag:


Brief Description:
A nation spawning from a planet with two native sapient species and one foreign one that crash landed on the planet thousands of years ago, all of whom joined together to form a culture of fearsome military prowess under the idea of the strong defending the weak. These three species, in the interest of keeping things brief, are essentially big ol' Orcs, a species of crab people who grow up to around the height of a humans waist, and a bunch of gene-modded human mercenaries who have essentially evolved away from being normal humans.

Claim:
I don't actually have any of the software needed to make this properly, so I'm really sorry about that. If you decide not to kick me out for that, maybe just a few planets towards the edge of the galaxy, well away from imperial space.

Government:
The Entei Bahara dynasties are ruled by the 'emperors' of the three clans, the Harakt, the Yagda, and the Middernachters. These three emperors are the heirs of their races royal families, and are traditionally raised together in order to build friendships between them. These three emperors each have a series of five retainers, handpicked from the younger siblings and noble families of their race by the emperors to be lifelong companions. These retainers are not only great warriors, but experts in many fields relevant to running a nation, and it is their duty to carry out their respective emperors will, advise them, and teach them everything they need to know.

Finally, in every city, town, and village, there is at least one office housing an Enulal, or Listener. These report any concerns Baharan citizens may have to the government so they can act on them.

History:
The history Entei Bahara is one littered with battles and bloodshed, with its many civilisations fighting against both each other and the planet itself. With a higher level of gravity than many other planets and an ecosystem full of what would have been apex predators on Earth, so much as reaching sapience was an uphill struggle, and it was discovered by scientists long before the modern day that several other species did in fact achieve this. There are several documented sites of completely separate species to the Harakt and Yagda creating large, tribal communities, only to be wiped out by natural disasters or local wildlife. However, out of the ashes of these failures, the two indigenous species who would come to inhabit the world were born.

The first were the Harakt, a large, grey-skinned primate species. Originating in the great mountain ranges and plains of the northern countries, much of the earlier years of their civilisation was spent in the form of hundreds of nomadic tribes, traveling to try and keep ahead of the bitter winters. They are the source of the Baharan religion, the Sunarak Dunan, or the Two Swordsmen, as well as the current retainer system, where each tribes chieftain would pick the five wisest, most capable warriors to act as their private guard and advisors. While wars inter-tribe warfare was not uncommon, disputes between tribes was far more often solved through mock battles, in which the chieftain, their retainers, and ten more of their best warriors, would use battle those of the opposing tribes using non-lethal practise weapons, usually in pursuit of a number of specifically marked objects in a manner similar to the human game of capture the flag. This would later evolve into a popular sport in Baharan culture, which is still used to settle disagreements between the three emperors to this very day. They also placed a lot of respect in the art of taming the natural wildlife, leading to the ancient art of Beast Mastery. These beast masters would regularly bond with incredibly dangerous animals over many years, and sometimes even decades, in order to give their tribe an advantage.

The second species were the Yagda, a species of short humanoids who evolved from desert dwelling crustaceans. The oldest evidence of their culture traces back to underground caverns under the vast deserts of the eastern continent Yensa, they soon spread to the surface. However, having evolved largely underground, the intense desert heat was too much to handle initially, and they retreated to the large rock formations littered across the continent. Here is where their culture truly took form, as they carved buildings into the sides of the rock itself. They also made use of a lot of animal materials, particularly the bones and shells of the larger desert species, which they used as a stand in for wood, an exceedingly rare material in the deserts the Yagda called home. Eventually though, they would spread back to the caverns they came from, where they would begin to build great cities and fortresses, many of which are still in use to this very day.

For millennia, these two races grew and evolved, completely oblivious to the others existence. The Harakt ceased their wandering to create grand, fortified cities high amidst the mountains filled with training grounds and temples to Dizarach and Grana, and the Yagda all but hollowed out the rock formations that made up their cities, learnt of ways to adapt to the harsh desert sun, and became true masters of the sands and the subterranean world. They even spread to the milder areas towards the north-eastern edge of the continent, building small villages to harvest and transport wood back to the southern cities, which was quickly establishing itself as a luxury resource.

However, the time would soon come when the Harakt would look from the seaside cliffs of their own continent, Mosphora, towards the horizon, and just a few hundred years later, they had taken the knowledge that allowed them to craft their canoes to the level of proper ship building, carving vessels out of the trunks of the ridiculously enormous trees native to the continent. It wasn't long after that that they made landfall on the coasts of Yensa, and after building the small colony of Enteia from surrounding trees, they ran into Yagda woodsmen, altering the future of their two species forever.

Over the next five hundred years, the two species would be engaged in a vicious cold war. Thousands of skirmishes would break out between the militia stationed in the Harakt colonies and the Yagda harvesters, particularly over the wood that was still quite rare compared to in Mosphora. Along with this, the Harakt and Yagda languages were quite different, making it difficult for the two species to properly communicate. However, there were some benefits that arose from this rocky relationship, the most well known of which being that, once faced with the concept of war with a whole other species they may have to fight in the future, the formerly divided nations of both the Harakt and the Yagda began to unify, leading to the formation of the two dynasties that still continue to this day.

However, at the end of this period, an event took place that would alter the course of the planets future. A large battleship named the Mitternacht crash landed on Yensa, about four hundred kilometres from Enteia. This ship served was carrying the entirety of the mercenary faction known as the Midnight Drifters, who focused primarily on genetic augmentation and modification on themselves to get an edge over their opponents, as well as their competitors. Many of the onboard facilities used in these procedures remained relatively intact when the ship crashed, but their engines, along with just about any other means of propulsion, had been destroyed in the battle that caused them to crash in the first place. The majority of other technologies, with the exception of their weapons, was also damaged or lost.

Just a day after the crash, parties from both the Harakt and the Yagda arrived on the scene of the crash to investigate. They were both so fascinated that they didn't even bother to fight each other, having never seen technology more advanced than a medieval level. However, this fascination would turn to fear and anger, as one Drifter caught sight of the two slowly advancing alien races, and opened fire in panic. The Harakt and Yagda tried to fight back, enraged at the deaths to their comrades, but neither side was even close to a match to the technology the mercenaries brought with them.

For at least a year, the Harakt and Yagda continued trying to fight the Drifters separately. These efforts constantly met with defeat, and it is believed that roughly a tenth of the Harakt military and an eight of the Yagda military were wiped out during this period. Desperate for even the smallest chance of victory, the two opposing civilisations reluctantly looked to each other for aid. This soon led to the formation of the Coalition of Entei, cementing the now bustling city as the middle ground between the two empires.

After the founding of the coalition, the two sides began to find more success, as together they were able to launch a successful raid on a scout team and obtain pieces of the mercenaries technology. From here, the two cultures exchanged knowledge as much as they could, and although the exact length of time is unknown, they were eventually able to reverse engineer the technology to create crude energy cannons, and even makeshift shields and melee weapons using the energy. Intrigued, as well as somewhat terrified, at the way the native races were able to reverse engineer such advanced technology, some of the Drifters began to seek them out, hoping to try and achieve some form of discussion with them before they advanced far enough to just wipe the mercenaries out. There were only about three hundred of them after all. Even with their skill, they could easily be overwhelmed without the technological advantage.

The leaders of the Coalition, while still both warlike races, were also more than willing to end the fighting. Too many resources were going into fighting this war, especially on the Harakt side, who had to send forces on long oversea voyages every time they wished to support their colony and allies. Eventually, this led to the two emperors meeting with the captain of the Midnight Drifters, and together they exchanged information and technology as a sign of trust, even if the coalition didn't have much technology to trade. This led to an uneasy peace between the Drifters and Coalition forces, who continued to live out of their ship for about another decade before finally beginning to construct new buildings around it.

Meanwhile, relations between the Harakt and Yagda continued to improve, as the time they spent fighting the Drifters caused a lot of bleed over between their cultures. One large part was the introduction of religion to the Yagda, with the majority of them adopting Sunarak Dunan, and the populations of the two civilisations even beginning to cross over into the others cities, building new temples to the Swordsmen and worshipping them. As time passed, their cities began to look less and less different, until they had all but merged into a single civilisation. The Drifters, deciding they would also rather become part of this growing civilisation than spend their entire existence looking over their shoulder for attacking forces, approached them yet again.

The Harakt and Yagda, having noticeably slowed in the reverse engineering of the Drifter technology, welcomed their former enemies with open arms. Of course, this came with the expectation that the Drifters would share their knowledge once again, and the Drifters were more than willing to comply. After this, the Drifters were absorbed into the fold, changing their name to Mitternachters to try and seem a little less like outsiders, and they began to actively teach the Harakt and Yagda the secrets behind their technology.

This continued for several hundred years, as the three races grew more and more intertwined and recreated the knowledge they had lost. The Middernachters took on an imperial system of rule like the Harakt and Yagda, following the descendants of the original captain, and gave rise to the Bahara Dynasties. Eventually, after centuries of work, the people of the planet Bahara were finally ready to reach out to the stars. Their fleets and military were more than ready, they had everything prepared for the colonisation of nearby worlds, and perhaps most importantly, they had a mission. While they didn't know the current state of the galaxy, they knew for sure that there were other races out there. More likely than not, there would be a good few civilisations who were unable to properly take care of their people, or worse, abused them.

Therefore, it was the duty of the Baharans to liberate these people, even if they themselves were not yet aware of the abuse they faced.

Military: The Baharan military is essentially the most important part of their society. Every able-bodied citizen of the dynasties serves for a minimum of fifteen years, and even those considered too frail for actual combat can volunteer for support and operator roles.

The military itself tends to focus largely on mechs, with specialised units for a number of different scenarios, and genetically augmented combatants, which includes both sapient and non-sapient life forms found in the empire. In addition to all this, they have a very large space fleet. While many of the technologies used by the Baharan military may seem primitive, or even outright barbaric to some, they are more than capable of using it in terrifying new ways in order to hold their own.







Religion/Culture:
Having existed outside the influence of both the Orionic and Zukkid empires, the people of Bahara were never taught of either empires religion. Instead, they continue to follow the ancient religion of the Harakt, Sunarak Dunan, which means Two Swordsmen. The idea behind the religion revolves around the swordsmen Enmal, who represents heat, fire, summer and the sun, and Dizarach, who represents cold, ice, winter and the largest of Bahara's three moons. It is believed that the two are constantly locked in battle, and the arrival of summer or winter is the direct effect of one gaining the upper hand and pushing back their opponent. However, neither will ever truly win the battle until the sun eventually expands to consume Bahara and it's moons.

The main thoughts behind Baharan culture are rather simple to grasp, to the point where even an outsider can easily fit in if they act properly. They are quite a blunt people, preferring to say what they mean straight out rather than beat around the bush, a habit they find quite insulting. This definitely helps when it comes to things like avoiding corruption, but it can make diplomacy quite a challenge. This has also led to a cultural importance of, for lack of a better term, having a thick skin. There are many things worth fighting over in the universe, but someone saying some mean words to you aren't one of them.

Above all this though is the empire wide focus on the military and combat, to which just about every facet of Baharan life can be linked. The strong must defend the weak, which means the strong must always continue to seek greater strength for said purpose. When a disagreement does occur, it is rare for the parties involved to reach a decision without some form of mock combat. Therefore, it pays to dedicate your life to combat, which is why the Baharans have a mandatory military service period of fifteen years.

Finally, resourcefulness is highly respected amongst the Baharan people, and they make a habit of using absolutely everything at their disposal to improve themselves and the empire. For example, it isn't uncommon for one o find animal materials such as fur, scales, or bone in Baharan buildings, weapons, and armour. This is because it is common for the planets enormous wildlife to rampage towards cities, requiring them to be killed, and once killed, it would be foolish to waste anything. The fact that many of these creatures are incredibly durable to many forms of weaponry is just a little bonus.

Demographics (Species):
40 percent Harakt
50 percent Yagda
10 percent Mitternachter

Characters:
The Three Emperors
Ffamran Unalai: Emperor of the Harakt, Ffamran is a rather quiet person. He speaks when he needs to, but believes that actions speak louder than words. Blunt, but polite, he is probably the most diplomatic out of the current three emperors. He is also an expert at hand to hand, capable of taking on many Mitternachters in a one on one fight, including Ashelia.

Chaloktha sil Medis: The Yagda emperor. A genius tactician and stategist, Chaloktha is the most easygoing of the three emperors. If he's involved in a battle, you can be sure he's one of the ones calling the shots, but outside of battle, he'll crack a few jokes, sit back, and relax.

Ashelia Vandernakt: The Mitternachter Empress, Ashelia is the 'boisterous' one. Loud, excitable, and always eager for a fight, she is widely believed to be the driving force behind the three, always dragging them forwards. That isn't to say she isn't all excitement and optimism however, as like all Mitternachters she is an incredibly capable fighter, and is both capable and happy to talk or fight circles around anyone who opposes her.

The Imperial Retainers
I'll be coming up with these as I go, so yeah, nothing yet.

Relations:
None yet, they're pretty isolated. Hopefully soon that'll change, though.

Habitation:
The types of climates preferred by Baharans varies depends on species. While the Harakt and Mitternachters prefer temperate environments, with the Mitternachters leaning more towards polar regions, the Yagda generally prefer to settle in deserts and underground. This has led to joint settlements between the three being quite intricate, extending both above and below the ground. As for transport, there are a number of methods, but the most common ones are by small carrier ships similar to those used by the military, along with some larger ships to travel between planets.

Brief Description:
The RMC is a collection of systems under the rule of the *Premier*, a hereditary position occupied by the head of House Novak. It is located in the region of the Perseus Arm known as the Via Maria. Once considered something of a backwater, these former imperial colonies metamorphosed into a unitary state with a strong warrior-class ethos. The Combine maintains an expansionist policy, expanding its realm via a large, skilled military renowned for its loyalty to the state. Though the Combine is ruled by a human monarch and considers itself to be pro-human, a few alien races have come to be accepted as equals.

Claim:

Government:
The Premier is the head of government and state in the Combine. Since its inception, the position has been held by the line of House Novak. The Premier is considered the heart and soul of the RMC - service to one is synonymous with service to the other. Though not worshipped or seen as divine, a strong cult of personality surrounds the Premier. He enjoys the extraordinarily strong loyalty and respect of his people.

The Premier is assisted by the High Command, a small council consisting of five District Warlords, one for each administrative district in the RMC. The Premier entrusts High Command to carry out his will, taking an indirect approach to day-to-day governance. Each member of High Command has authority over the military forces stationed within his district. The position is an extremely powerful one, answerable to none, save the Premier.

History: TBA

Military:
The Royal Marian Armed Forces (RMAF) is the most prestigious institution of the Combine. It is the pillar on which the RMC stands, so strong is the nation’s warrior ethos. The Combine shares a collective belief in a mandate to conquer its surroundings within the Perseus Arm, eventually moving on to adjacent territories of known space. The RMAF is the sword - literally and figuratively - with which it will do so. For these reasons, service in the military is seen as the surest way to get ahead in life and the socio-economic benefits of a successful career are high. The RMC has a large pool of soldiery to call on: well-equipped, well-trained and loyal - sometimes bordering on fanatical. This warrior culture is not without drawbacks, as individuals have been known to throw their lives away in fierce last stands against overwhelming enemies, or neglect unorthodox tactics for rigid adherence to outdated schools of thought. Premier _ Novak is in the middle of ushering reforms to the RMAF to temper its martial ethos with acceptance of unconventional methods and quelling antiquated practices.

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Religion/Culture: (The two largest religions as of now are Kineticism and Anchorism. Both of these have sects and subsets, plus there's many religions beside this. Culturally, again, be creative, and give details. Details help make a nation and an NRP great.)

Demographics (Species): (Make sure to check out the Species Database)

Characters: (You don't need to go that in depth in the NS, but once we get to IC, definitely have them fleshed out, at least mentally.)

Relations: (Talk to people! This section in NRPs often goes neglected, but it's important for other characters making their own NSs.)

Habitation: (How and where people live; preferred modes of transportation, stuff like that)

Also called the Dragonrealm it describes an old culture of wanderers who spend most of their lives in space habitats. They're spread out and only sporadically make contact with outsiders. They refer to their species as "Asterians" or the children of stars and are known to have a vaguely feudalistic government lead by the Kaiser.


Drachenreich and the Asterians consider themselves apart from humanity, a whole new race. Yet the fact is their history begins as a peculiar group of human colonists during the early years of the Imperial Era or perhaps even before. Proper databank and historical records were meticulously deleted and as such it's difficult to pinpoint exactly when the journey of the Dragon's Flight began. It isn't clear what motivated the colonists to wager to reach the furthest reach of the galaxy. What little records are left about distant Asterian origins only exist as barely disguised propaganda text serving to reinforce Drachenreich ideology. According to these the Dragon's Flight project was initiated by the brilliant mind and rich businessman Theodore Drake. To his beliefs mankind was doomed for sticking to their antiquated lifestyle and views and refusing to let go of their blood soaked history. In order to prevent this inevitable demise humans must reborn anew free of their past influences. For this end he funded a grandiose project for a colony ship unlike anything else. It was less like a ship and more of a mobile space habitat, vaguely modeled after classic O'Neill type cylinders. In its center lied a gigantic warp core, allowing the entire vessel to travel at warp speed. According to the records 5 million colonists willingly assisted Drake in his noble cause. The more likely explanation is that Drake used his wealth to convince poor people off the streets to risk this journey.

After this point the Drachenreich propaganda only gets more ridiculous, making the grueling and tense journey into a magical adventure with stereotyped alien characters only serving to inflate Asterian ego and even Drake's personal meeting with the one true god blessing him with the duty of saving all of mankind. It's possible some of these tales have a smidgen of truth to it but separating fact from fiction is borderline impossible. What is certain that mid-journey Drake created the basis of the ideology which would later define Asterian culture, on of the most crucial points being the refusal to settle on large astronomical bodies as Drake believed natural gravity is poisonous to the soul. Instead of finding habitable planets the predecessors of the Asterians began constructing new space habitats just like their original one. It can be also confirmed that they encountered numerous alien races and adopted various technologies not known to the empire. In the next few centuries the human population gradually transformed into the race we cal the Asterians. Records claim it was Drake's vision for a better mankind but most likely it began as a vanity project to prolong his life. Either way, the once singular colony of few million people rapidly grew to a network of mobile space habitats journeying through space with Drake as their almighty emperor.

Yet eventually this came to an end. Propaganda texts tell a sad story about intrigue and betrayal where Drake met a tragic end. Most likely the people just had enough of Drake playing god and dethroned him. Asterians sunk to centuries of chaos and internal wars, most city this as the origin of the Great Houses. This continued until about a thousand years ago when a truce was formed along with the crowing of the new Kaiser. Unlike before the ruler was less like an emperor with absolute power and more akin to a medieval king who required the lords' support. Ever since then society barely changed. Drachenreich remained a loose collection of space colonies spread through the galaxy.




Asterians believe in the fact that living on planets and other large cosmic bodies with notable natural gravity would weight down their souls and lead to their moral/ethical ruin. As such they prefer to live in artificial environments of the space habitats, albeit dwarf planets and asteroids can be also acceptable. They are often nomadic, preferring to not remain at the same place for long. Drachenreich subjects in general are xenophobic and don't trust outsiders and even fellow Asterians from distant colonies have a hard time to warm up to each other. They live in a relatively rigid social system of commoners (Landsmanner) and nobles (Edel). On the other hand Asterian culture doesn't really have a much of a distinction between genders when it comes to jobs or even titles. A girl in Asterian society can equally inherit a noble house's properties and a considerable number of Drachenreich's rulers were female under the title of Kaiserin.

As for timekeeping the Asterians use cycles instead of days which equals roughly 10 terrestrial hours. Work and rest is usually in different cycles altogether albeit for better efficiency they invented quarter-cycles and even tenth-cycles (decicycle, roughly equivalent to an hour). Decicycles are split to 100 milicycles and those to 100 moments. As such an "asterian day" (cycle) is 4 quartercycles or 10 decicycles, or 1000 milicycles or 100000 moments depending on which measurement unit you use. An Asterian "week" is 10 cycles and usually is referred as "Decans" an abbreviation of decacycles. Their "months" are 100 cycles and referred as "Periods", each named after an Asterian mythological figure. An asterian "year" is always 1000 cycles long and while it can be called kilocycle its more common names include Alt, Yahr or just simply year. Asterian calendar takes the date of the Reich's foundation as its "zero date" anything before that is "vor dem Reich" (before the Realm, abbreviated as VR) and anything after it is "in dem Reich" (within the Realm, abbreviated as IR). The current date (during the RP's start, at least) is IR3002. When writing down exact dates they use a simple system (for example the 10th cycle of Drachonar (3rd decan) in IR3002 would be: IR 3002.0310). This can even go down to subcycles as say during the same cycle 3002.03100543 means that it's past the fifth decicycle and at the 43rd milicycle. For ease they at times divide the different types with full stops (like for example: 3002.03.10.05.43) but this isn't the standard everywhere. The reason for such clinically neat system is simple, Asterians are space travelers with no fix reference point for time aside from computers counting its passage. In addition given the distance it isn't rare for the calendars of faraway colonies to diverge to a considerable amount. To avoid this going overboard Drachenstadt's time is taken as the global standard and periodically all colonies synchronize to them. That being said there are rare cases when distant colonies fail to contact/synchronize with Drachenstadt for years. And of course rouge colonies and other factions not officially part of Drachenreich no longer synchronize with the capital's calendars. This is of course the source of a myriad of nuanced issues.


Drachenreich is considered a monarchy, lead by the Kaiser or Kaiserin. This is an elected title granted through the support of the aristocracy and could be revoked any time using the same measures. Candidates are usually (albeit not always) are chosen from the Seven Great Houses. The feuds and alliances of these families determine much of the Dragonrealm internal politics. Infighting, coups and rebellions aren't uncommon. As a true feudalist system the majority of colonies are under the hold of the aristocrats, only Drachenstadt and the few core colonies surrounding it are the Crown's explicit property. The basic requirement of stable rulership requires the candidate to own considerable personal holdings and/or set up a strong web of alliances owning most property. Legislature is split between the upper and lower houses. Also referred as the High Council the upper house consists of the eldest active members of each Great House, the Kaiser/Kaiserin, the Grand Caretaker and the senior heads of other major owners. Edler (nobles) have the opportunity to request audience within the High Council and may even participate for a session if given the Kaiser's permission. Commoners though can only enter the halls if specifically invited and only as long as they're needed. Lower house describes the gathering and legislative body of local representatives, one for each colony or major outpost. Each vote is weighed by the count of lives within that property, at times with a multiplier weighing into the results. The latter is mostly used to give mining outposts a more realistic importance in votes as their economic influence can shape entire regions. Laws are always created in the upper house which the lower house only need to accept and make the preparations to enforce them. At times the lower house might not be satisfied with the details of the law and instead submit a modified version back to the upper house. Alternatively the lower house can give suggestions for new laws or royal actions. Unlike in many of the more democratic systems the lower house is weaker and does not have the authority to check and limit the upper house's power.

Drachenreich is a civilization with numerous discoveries and scientific achievements in the past. Correspondingly they have a fairly developed industry and relatively sophisticated technology. On the other hand their social structure even makes them opposed to any meaningful innovation which rendered their technological level mostly stagnant. While they have kept refining their technology for those millennia the most significant scientific developments were through adopting technology from other civilizations. Their industry generally thrives on exploiting nebulas and asteroids for their resources and rather than improving the efficiency they're more inclined to just raise the sheer quantity of collectors. Another common sector is agriculture which tends to use relatively traditionalist farms. Synthetic foods are incredibly uncommon, only used when all else is unavailable. AI technology exists and helps industrial processes but they aren't advanced enough to replace all forms of manual labor, nor there's an interest to do that. Small scale manufacture also likes using live workforce but when it comes to larger scale projects the automatization grows immensely. Most Asterian colonies have a mile-wide if not larger cylindrical portion in their center dedicated to nothing but heavy industry, often while abusing the benefits of near-vacuum and zero gravity environment. And these literal giants of industry are supported by a flood of resource collection units and transports ferrying materials from interstellar distances. Drachenreich has a stagnant technological environment but only because their current level of development is more than sufficient to sustain them. That and dramatic changes would undoubtedly affect their society, a notion which the nobility is outright afraid of.


Like the government, Drachenreich's military is in the hands of nobles. Every Lord has obligations to maintain an army for defense. Yet more often than not these are insufficient for anything more than internal security. As such for over a millennia it's a common practice for Lords to rent the services of knight orders. Knights (Ritter) are a portion of the nobility who dedicate their lives for warfare. They generally do that by joining one of the myriad of knight orders starting as a mere apprentice, squire and then become a fully fledged knight. Landeritters are the lowest rank who are little more than common troops while Rittermeister (Knight Lords) are managing an entire Mobile Castle (Kriegschloss). The supreme leader of each knight order are called the Hochmeister (Grandmaster). Since reliable interstellar travel required massive vessels they invented the Castles (Kriegschlösser) which serve as mobile fortresses and base of operations. They carry both troops and service staff required for long campaigns and some of these castles are indeed on permanent patrol duty. Of course as a mobile base the Kriegschlösser aren't fit to be general frontline vessel and instead they use small ships for that purpose. Yet during combat in space the primary focus is on the Ritterpanzers, 8-12 meters tall giant mechs with capability to fight in space and even inside space habitats.