[hider=The Gobacks]
[center][h1][color=Red]The Gobacks[/color][/h1]
[img]https://image.ibb.co/cnrFvT/byzantine_empire_emblem.jpg[/img]
[color=gold][b][i]The weak will suffer what they must, the strong will do what they can.[/i][/b][/color][/center]

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.

[hider=Goback Claim]

A sphere of worlds in The Abyss and another in the Wayfarer's Graveyard (both ends of the gates).[/hider]

[h3]Government[/h3]
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.

[h3]History[/h3]
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?

[h3]Military[/h3]

[i][b]Space[/b][/i]

[b]Weapons and systems:[/b]
[i]-Gamma Pulsar:[/i] 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.
[i]-Alchemic Beam:[/i] 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.
[i]-Diffusing gas:[/i] 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.
[i]-Atomic Cover:[/i] 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.

[url=https://pre00.deviantart.net/7638/th/pre/f/2012/049/f/a/novus_aeterno___verunas_fortress_class_by_phoenix_06-d4q5llt.jpg]-Modular Capital Ships:[/url] 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.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/a0b7/f/2012/147/7/3/telikos_protocol___rail_gun_platforms_by_phoenix_06-d51arud.jpg]-Siege Guns:[/url] 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.

[url=https://img00.deviantart.net/e198/i/2015/122/0/e/spaceship_sketches_4_by_peterprime-d8rvnz7.jpg]-Modular Drones:[/url] 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. [url=https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GH3mP4kJe7o]They don't stop coming.[/url]

[b]The Edward Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[b]The Erika Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[b]The Keo Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[b]The Corsair Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[b][u]Planetary:[/u][/b]

[url=https://pre00.deviantart.net/a517/th/pre/f/2008/164/8/d/mech_s83_by_sundragon_by_okaw.jpg]-Vanguard Units:[/url] Specialized reconnaissance drones that are equipped with a multitude of optics and are entangled to the quantum network, they are stealth capable and charged to do the heavy lifting of most operations, meaning targeting enemy fortifications and troops concentrations for nuking or at least copious artillery strikes and monitor their ground movements. These units are, by comparison to most others in the Sutherland rooster, surprisingly sturdy and long lived, being able to operate within some capacity for centuries and even if in hiding serving as eyes and ears spying on the enemy communications for quite some time.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/308a/f/2010/137/1/4/borer_by_tabnir.jpg]-Area Denial Units:[/url] Distributed as sub-munitions from bombs, these include the smart mines capable of homing in to their targets or like pic related, tiny parasite like machines that worm their way to a being's brain to then detonate. Even if it doesn't reach the head though, the tunneling causes debilitating damage and makes for a potent psychological weapon.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/4ada/f/2010/310/3/0/drone_04__the_sniper_by_mikejensen-d32ai71.png]-Advanced Units:[/url] Sometimes kill bots do not have enough flexibility and finesse to accomplish important tasks and direct control is needed, thus these more advanced humanoid units benefit from Quantum Entanglement. Also often used by Erika and Edward for the 'FPS experience'.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/2828/f/2014/062/e/7/node_8_by_fightpunch-d78t30h.jpg]-Basic Units:[/url] The bread and butter mass produced fire and forget ground units. They have basic roam and shoot intelligence and rely on basic communications to swarm toward an enemy with their arrays of weapons. They don't have spare ammunition or indeed hands to reload as they statistically have all the ammo needed to fire until they are destroyed. Those that survive longer use the weapons of those who have fallen early.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/ee3c/f/2014/062/2/b/node_9_by_fightpunch-d78t32l.jpg]-Heavy Units:[/url] Sometimes, all it takes is MOAR DAKKA and this unit is there for this purpose. Due to a sound its hydraulics made, some idiots started rumors that in these units, the minds of those who angered the Sutherlands are kept to suffer for eternity. This amused the Sutherlands who changed the design to include a tiny holo projector to make a screaming skull and intimidate people. Somewhat effective.

[url=https://orig00.deviantart.net/90a6/f/2013/133/4/c/mechrender_4_by_fightpunch-d655yno.jpg]-Small Platforms:[/url] A multipurpose platform serving anti-air, anti-ground and repair purposes made to support advances with a multitude of different possible weapon layouts. It is rather slow, but ideal to advance in nuclear blasted landscapes and hunker down to weather a counter attack as an armored pillbox.

[url=https://img00.deviantart.net/6dc8/i/2012/350/d/8/mech_by_fightpunch-d5o6cic.jpg]-Large Platforms:[/url] The walking Armageddon, these machines are equipped with Gamma Pulsars or other such weapons and throw nukes around like candies. Generally weapons deployed when the fleet can't stick around to destroy everything from orbit or when they are needed for their ability to hit space targets from the surface of a planet. Still, these are rare as their size makes them costly, their loses being not insignificant for Keo.



[b]The Edward Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[b]The Erika Doctrine:[/b]
Infiltration in depth. 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 depth 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.

[b]The Keo Doctrine:[/b]
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?

[b]The Corsair Doctrine:[/b]
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.

[h3]Religion/Culture[/h3]
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?

[h3]Demographics:[/h3]
Unknown. Just... Unknown. No one keeps any census or tab on that. The majority seems human enough though.

[h3]Characters[/h3]


[h3]Relations[/h3]


[h3]Habitation[/h3]


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