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Zeroth
The Last Laugh




The Ashtar? Bunch of assholes. Bullshitty jumped-up psychic hippy assholes. Ask literally anyone anywhere and they’ll say the same.

They popped up almost exactly 130 years ago. And I do mean “popped up”; one day they were just everywhere all at once, and everyone knew who they were, and why they had come.

It was a noble enough goal; peace in our time and all that good shit. It’s just that they were such giant assholes about it.

You ever been Pushed? No, course you haven’t, you’re too young. Not a psintegrat in the galaxy these days who could do what the Ashtar did, thank the Gods. When they came, they Pushed us. All of us. Every last man woman and child, every blip of sentient spacefaring life in the galaxy. It didn’t hurt, not really. Psintegrae that we have, what they does hurts. It’s a fight, when they try to change something, a fight you have a chance in. But getting Pushed...well, one moment your mind is one way, then you have a little stabby feeling behind the eyes, then your mind is another way. The Ashtar wanted the Galaxy to know why they were here, and they didn’t want to waste time with sub space transmissions and translation algorithms. So they just...Pushed. Some folks didn’t mind it, some folks clawed their own eyes out. Guess I fell somewhere in the middle.

So they spent a hundred odd years enforcing peace in the galaxy. And that’s the right word for it, cuz they sure used a lot of force to keep the peace, at least at first. Between their gate tech and the PsiNet, they could come calling on any scuffles that might be brewing. Only ever took a few cruisers to put a stop to that. Whole fleets got taken out by those cruisers, in the early days. Beautiful ships they were, but more deadly than you’d ever believe. Not invincible, but damned close. When everyone got to comparing notes back at the Madrigasa talks, we figured they lost maybe 7 cruisers in the whole 100 years. Course they were just cruisers. Ashtar sent one of their capital ships around on a tour of the galaxy once. Thing was the size of a small moon...

Anyways, bout a hundred years pass, then *poof*, gone. Took everyone a while to realize it, but they up and left, every last ship, in about a day.

Rest is modern history, really. The Great War, the Madrigasa talks, the Treaty of Detente, all that. I guess the Great War kindof proved the Ashtar’s point. Took the galaxy less than a year to start a war like we’d never seen before. Like we’d never known we even could see.

And now the stupid bastards who run things are about to do it again. Madrigasa and the Detente would’ve lasted if the Ashtar hadn’t poked their godam noses in again. Assholes had to know what they’d provoke. Oh sure, that Llyena woman talked the good talk, “come together as a galaxy, carry on our legacy”, all that crap. But they had to know that every government in the galaxy would be willing to do anything to get their hands on Ashtar tech. Llyena said they were dying, leaving, whatever. I figure they just decided to fuck with us on the way out. PsiNet’s final message. The Ashtar’s last laugh.

So here we are. The fighting’s still holed up at Agdemnar, all those “rogue elements” and “expeditionary forces” killing eachother, but it won’t last. No, those new hyperdreads everyone’s building, most of those are never going to see Agdemnar orbit. They’re building them to go for the throat. Damn galaxy’s one stray spark away from going up in flames. So I don’t know, maybe the Ashtar were right in the end. Maybe that’s the joke.

Well I ain’t laughing.


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Welcome all to my inaugural attempt at running a sci-fi NRP. Let’s see how running one of these things actually works.

There’s a couple key elements to the setting, but I’ll spell out the history a little more plainly first.

In short, some high tech psychic space elves (the Ashtar) spent a hundred years playing peacekeepers in the Milky Way. If you don’t like space elves, I’ve got good news: they’re all dead. Anyways, less than a galactic standard year after they left, war breaks out. It started out small enough, but pretty much everyone got involved before the end came, 10 years later. Peace was negotiated on the neutral world Madrigasa, and in the ensuing spirit of cooperation and unity, the Treaty of Detente was signed. It did a lot of nice things, but mostly it limited naval construction. It gave the galaxy 20 odd years of peace. Then the Ashtar sent out a psionic broadcast across the galaxy, announcing that they were dying/leaving, and giving the coordinates to Agdemnar, their outpost at the centre of the galaxy. Agdemnar in turn would “open the way” to the fabled Ashtar homeworld of Ayrie, where the races of the galaxy could “take on the mantle” of the Ashtar and carry on their work and so on. Naturally every government around was mostly thinking about all the amazing Ashtar tech they could loot from Ayrie, and how much it would suck to share that with their neighbors. Naval construction kicked back up at a frantic pace, including the new hyperdreadnoughts, which I’ll get to in a minute. Everyone sent forces to Agdemnar, but most sent “mercenaries” or “relief forces”, or claimed the admirals and generals involved had gone rogue. The result is that so far the fighting has been contained to Agdemnar, but everyone knows that’s going to change. So build your space boats, make some friends, and get ready for a fight.

Note that this setting will have very little room for first contact situations. I’m establishing a shared galactic history that everyone’s been involved in to some extent. There will certainly be nations with no established diplomatic contact, but this setting is interconnected enough that your nation will have at least heard of everyone else’s. Certainly there can be exceptions, so if you’re wanting to play an isolated nation and do first contact, write up an NS and I’ll take a look.



Tl;dr rules for the lazy among us

1. Every nation was in some way impacted by the Ashtar, otherwise there’s no reason for them to engage in the central plot.
2. Your engagement with the Great War and the galaxy’s shared history will determine how big I let your nation be. I’ve formalized this into three classes, read on to find out more.
3. Everyone starts with largely outdated or small navies built before or under the Treaty of Detente. This is mostly to level the playing field a bit, but I’m open to exemptions.
4. Everyone has some level of forces on Agdemnar. Might just be a few special ops teams, but you have people there. Note you don’t have to always use them; as in, you don’t have to write up battle posts for Agdemnar every time you post, but your guys should be there.
5. Everyone builds Hyperdreads. I’m not going to bother determining the combat effectiveness and relative power levels of every class of ship for every navy, and the Hyperdreads will not penalize the rest of your forces in any way, so just take the godamn super spaceships that I’m giving you for free.
6. Play nice. Really, sort out your differences politely amongst yourselves. You don’t want me intervening, if only because I’m lazy and any intervening I do will be sweeping and arbitrary, and probably disappointing for everyone involved (sex joke!).
7. No planet crackers. Just don’t want to deal with that. You’re welcome to glass the surface but no blowing the things up.
8. There’s always a kerfuffle over FTL. I as of this writing have not decided what I’m going to do to preempt/respond to that kerfuffle. Ideally we’ll all play nice and work out a compromise, but I reserve the right to slap rules on FTL and how it’s used.
EDIT: Newly slapped minor limitation! All FTL, regardless of tech, doesn't work within 1 light minute of a planet or star. Putter your way in and out of the interdiction zone at sublight, otherwise feel free to combat FTL around as fast as your generators can cycle!
9. Speaking of slapping, I reserve the right to boot anyone at any time for any reason, or no reason whatsoever. Don’t get me wrong, I want people to play this and I want people to enjoy this, so I’m not going to be kicking people for the lulz. What I mean is that if you’re being a dick, you’re not entitled to a defence attorney, a fair trial, and a jury of your peers. I’m not going to play internet lawyer with dicks, I’m just going to give em the boot. I do like to think of myself as a reasonable person so I’ll generally stick with warnings and trying to talk out the problem, but yeah, consider yourselves warned.

Please post your nation sheets in the OOC tab for approval, then move them to the Characters tab when I give the OK.

I’m probably going to make a discord. The link will be distributed by PM once folks have posted an NS.

NS Format: see next post. I’m going to go ahead and code the thing out, but that format is not strictly necessary, I’m just doing it to make things easy to read for myself. Go ahead and quote the post to get the code.

NOTE: I’m aiming to get some collaborative history building going, so I’ve decided to formally divide nations into three classes. You may choose whichever one you want, there’s no limit on how many we can have of any type.

Major Belligerent: Your nation was a major participant in the Great War, your brave men and women fought valiantly across the galaxy for peace, justice, all that good stuff. Consequently, your nation was a major force in shaping the treaty of Detente and the post-war galaxy as we know it. Your words carry weight at any table, your while your economy took a beating during the war, you have the population, resources, and prestige to restore what was lost, sooner than your enemies might think.

Minor Belligerent: Your nation fought at the side of a Major Belligerent, contributing what men and materiel it could from its more limited resources. Your contributions did not go unnoticed, and your voice carried loud and clear at the Madrigasa talks. You may lack the diplomatic clout and resources of the Galaxy’s old guard, but your star is in the ascendant; less affected by the ravages of the Great War, your nation is poised to become the first of a new age of galactic powers.

Non-combatant/neutral: Let other fools fight. You wisely stood by the sidelines when the Great War began, though perhaps it was your small size and unimportance that saved your nation from the war. Still, you’ve managed to grow in the interwar years, building up rather than building anew. Your more influential neighbors may crush you under their boots once they’re fully mobilized, but only if you don’t slit their throats first.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Ozerath
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Ozerath U WOT M8?

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Nation Sheet Format

(Please do put the thing in a hider, as shown below)


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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Archetype Zero
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Archetype Zero 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖉 𝕺𝖓𝖊

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Working now.
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Aleranicus
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Aleranicus Sovereign's Finest

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Getting something up now, will continue working on it throughout the weekend.

Basically a large food producer, genetic engineering nation with an outdated navy. Their planets feed whole sectors and rely on a web of Alliances to keep their borders safe after being partially occupied during the Great War.

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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Sierra
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Sierra The Dark Lord

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Still working on this (it only goes up to the first few years of the Great War), but here's a preview of some history.



I did totally decide to be sadistic to my poor empire (I still love them). I figure they'll spend the rest of the war using part of their military industrial complex to produce someone else's ships in support, while the rest of it steadily rebuilds their core navy force. The Treaty of Detente would widely be viewed as a suggestion and careful measures to continue construction of powerful capital class warships would be taken. I expect they'd be given a little bit of slack considering they were completely stripped of naval forces twice, but they'd still be very carefully walking on eggshells.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Ozerath
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Ozerath U WOT M8?

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Good stuff lads, I'll get my NS adapted to the setting and posted soon, might help preempt any questions anyone has.
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Sigma
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Sigma

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Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Archetype Zero
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Archetype Zero 𝕿𝖍𝖊 𝕾𝖍𝖆𝖙𝖙𝖊𝖗𝖊𝖉 𝕺𝖓𝖊

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Work in progress.

Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Sierra
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Sierra The Dark Lord

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I finished the history up, though I elected to trim the bit about helping someone else because it just kind of flowed to omit it. I also got a blurb together for the dreadnought.


While utterly annihilating the navy TWICE seems cruel and puts the Alduuri at a severe numerical disadvantage, it does give the benefit of the entire fleet being state of the art. All of their ships were designed from scratch in the last 30 years, rather than putting century-old designs back into production to facilitate a war effort.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Kood
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Kood

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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Legion02
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Legion02

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Okay so just the short blurb of what I'm making:

Basically, a human faction that was JUST small enough to be crushed by the Ashtar. They have a substance on their homeworld that reacts with psionic powers. At first, they only had latent psionic powers and had to enhance them through technology. Though it did allow each person to control several drones in the field. The result is that almost their entire army and navy depends on psionics. So yeah, the Ashtar crushed them but after that they sort of got a bit of help with the psionics to even out the field. So long story short, they mix technology and psionics to give me an excuse to use magitech stuff.

However, quite obviously they are a minor belligerent faction so if anyone is interested in writing some shared history, hit me up!
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Kood
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ok ill give it a shot


if i missed anything please inform me I've been writing for a while now
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Sigma
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Sigma

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@Legion02 There isn't much history for me to cover, but would it be alright if your nation had an Ashtari Cult/Sect by the time of the war?(They possibly would've engaged in terrorism and all that during the war), could also explain the number of human psonics within the Ascendancy.

And depending if relations havnen't soured from the acts of said sect, there would possibly still be a small amount Ashtari faithful within your nation, plus some missionaries directly from the Ascendancy.
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Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Legion02
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@Sigma An Ashtari cult would certainly be a possibility as the Asrians (name of my faction, they're all humans though) see themselves as an Apprentice faction of the Ashtar. Though they generally don't crack down religion, most don't believe the Ashtar are gods (this is more on account of their own arrogance than believing the Ashtar were great enough to be gods). So a Sect certainly could have formed and all cultists from Asra (the home planet) would have at the very least some latent psionic powers (though it would generally have to be aided by technology to be viable).

However, if they chose to act during the Great War through terrorism inflicted upon any of the Crown Worlds (Asra, the homeworld) or Noble worlds (Worlds meant mostly for the advancement of culture and science), the sect would be hunted down. So any missionaries would be politely but firmly asked to leave.
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Sigma
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@Legion02 Actually, you mentioning your faction being sort of "Apprentices" could very well change how the cultists reacted during the Great War. With their I assume, more positive outlook on the Ashtar, this could've caused a sort of schism in the Asrian Sect, some of the cultists engaging in terrorism, others(those that probably hailed from Noble Worlds or Asra itself), would've fought against their brothers, causing a very confusion situation for all, although granted the cults/sects were a very disorganized bunch during the war, with no central authority to answer too and such.

And in the present time, although the Asrians and Jalaryians differ great on the Ashtar, I could see relations between the two possibly being somewhat warm, depends really.
Hidden 5 yrs ago Post by Romero
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Romero Prince of Darkness

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I'll throw my hat in the ring for this, looks very interesting. The first idea that comes to mind is playing a splinter group of a now-collapsed empire, that have become a pseudo-scavenger/pirate faction in recent years, a haven for renegades and runaways based around a Port Royal style home-planet/star-base. Would that be something that could work?
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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Do you have a discord channel? I know there's a stigma attached to it and I can get it but it does spice up activity a lot and allows brainstorming like never before.

That being said, I have several possible ideas in my head. Will re-read the plot and read over other player sheets to see if there's a particular niche which needs to be filled.
Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Willy Vereb
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Interconnected world, long history of space travel, everyone knows each other. Hmm.. yeah, I guess it's time to revive White Corps. For those unfamiliar, White Interstellar Corporations is basically a megacorp like civ. In terms of plot relevance they engage in a lot of trade and they like to deal in high tech, as well as exploiting stuff to earn more profit. White Security Services is their mercenary/PMC branch which can and frequently does lend assistance to outsiders even if their primary function is to provide security for White Corps. As a multi-national megacorp their employees come from a myriad of backrounds and races, pretty much a corporate meritocracy.


Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Kalmar
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Kalmar The Mediocre

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Here is what I have thus far. Still a WIP.

Hidden 5 yrs ago 5 yrs ago Post by Nate1008
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Nate1008

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I would like to join. Does my nation need to be human, or intelligent? I would like to make a creature alien kind of nation please. If I am allowed to, please let me know. Thank you!
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