ClocktowerEchos — Roleplayer Guild

Crisis of the Confederacy

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It is 2259 AD and the Stellar Confederacy is dying. Decades of mismanagement, corruption, political instability and economic troubles has been capped off with the destruction of Earth. On March 15th, 2259, the very nation-states that birthed the myriad of human colonies and settlments across the stars destroyed themselves, cleansing the homeworld of humanity in nuclear fire and taking most of the Confederate government with them. Now billions of souls look across the stars and all ask a single question: 

"What happens next?"
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Humanity has spread across the stars but not even the vast distances of space can stop humanity's basest instincts. The promise of a brighter tomorrow fades with every standard cycle and old order is failing. Will humanity be reunited in a glorious empire to stand the test of time? Or will ambition, rivalry and desire rip apart all that has been built among the stars?

Crisis of the Confederacy (CoC) is an NRP about space warlords fighting over the remains of the Stellar Confederacy after the sudden self-destruction of Earth and its resulting power vacuum. This is a human-centric RP and while alien and synthetic life exist, they are not a major part of this RP. The major theme of this RP is equal parts opportunism and good intentions gone awry depending on what kind of faction you play. The big meta-theme of this NRP is simple nationsheets; more details will be provided but the point of this NRP is not to have a dense NS filled with fluff and details that won't ever actually be applicable and to always have everything be as accessible as possible.

Discord Here!

LORE
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The Stellar Confederacy is the interstellar governmental assembly made up of all the colonized human worlds and governed by the Confederate Parliament situated on Earth. Each planet is allowed to a great degree of autonomy as they follow the Colonial Charter, the Confederate Law Code and the Geneva-Aceront Accords (known as the Three Articles of Confederation) which has lead to a great diversity of planets, cultures and peoples developing. The main role of the Confederate Parliament was to mediate inter-planetary disputes, infrastructure projects too big for a single system or world to undertake alone (such as the Rift Stations), planetary/humanitarian aid and anti-piracy duties.

There are standardized currency, timekeeping and a language. Confederate Credits is a widely accepted currency whose reserves were mostly on Earth but also scattered around other planets. Solar Standard Time is often used and transcribed to local orbits but years, months and weeks are kept as similar as possible. Confederate Common is an evolved form of Esperanto said by the highly educated and is a sort of "Latin" where more vernacular languages are spoken on most worlds; for the purposes of this RP, every character is going to be assumed to be speaking in Confederate Common unless otherwise noted.

The Colonial Charter lays out the requirements for joining the Parliament and having a seat, requiring a certain level of development and population. This has sometimes lead to smaller worlds banding together to get a collective seat on the Parliament. More controversially, this was the clause that megacorps used to gain their own seats in the Parliament.

The Confederate Law Code is the largest of the articles and details the legal framework of the Confederacy, containing some of the things that the Confederacy really cares about and will go out of their way to prevent. This includes outright slavery, the requirement of AI oversight, the illegal trade of contraband and the protection of space shipping.

The Geneva-Aceront Accords was created in the aftermath of the highly controversial invasion of the alien world of Aceront where Confederate forces where engaged with the Aceront, an alien race who had only achieved a level of technological development comparable to Earth's World Wars-era and the most developed race humanity has encountered. It is a continuation of the Geneva Convention while expanding it to include space warfare and the protection of alien races that doesn't allow for wholesale genocide of native sentient aliens.

The Confederate military consists of the Confederate Navy and the Confederate Marine corps, both of which were fairly small and specialized forces who mostly preformed anti-piracy duties. The Navy consisted of mostly destroyers, frigates and corvettes with a rumored light cruiser carrier in the works but was never seen prior to the self destruction of Earth. The Marine Corp was a force specialized in taking control of pirate hideouts and smuggler ports, rarely being used as a garrison force with that being reserved for whatever form of local planetary defense forces, armies or militias where on the world.

Confederate Armed Forces used both ballistic and energy-based weaponry. Their naming convention is fairly straight forward, for example: CSBC Mk.2/21 "Drummer". Fully expanded, this is a Confederate Standard Ballistic Carbine, Mark 2, made in factory with the number of 21 and nicknamed the Drummer. (All factories across the Confederacy have a serial number assigned to them.) In general, the Marines prefer ballistic weapons while the Navy prefers energy weapons. Standard issue weaponry include:

CSBC Mk.2/X "Drummer" Carbine
CSEPDW Mk.3/X "Holdout" Energy PDW
CSBSMG Mk.5/X "Storm" SMG
CSER Mk.3/X "Blackjack" Energy Revolver
CSSP-B Mk.2/X "Crown" Service Pistol, Ballistic
CSBDMR Mk.5/X "Lawman" DMR
CSED-F Mk.2/X Explosive Device, Fragmentation

[Pic and info about standard Confederate Navy ships here]

For the Warlord factions (the players), your "warships" are most likely going to be converted civilian craft: pleasure yachts, research vessels, cargo freighters, passenger shuttles and industrial ships. Even civilian ships typically come equipped with some form of anti-asteroid guns while some models of ships meant for more remote or dangerous areas come slightly more armed to fight off pirates long enough to escape or get aid.

Department 21, more commonly called D21, is officially the Confederacy's intelligence agency and is subservient to the Confederate military. Their official duty is to find hidden pirate outposts but they're shrouded in mystery. Most people don't believe them to be a threat considering the shady shit that planets and corporations can get away with, but wild conspiracies about them are still found. The most curious thing about them is their name; the Confederate government is organized into ministries and offices, no where is the term "department" used besides for D21.

Although overshadowed by some of her most successful children, Earth has always remained the heart of humanity. Although no longer the sole industrial or economic powerhouse it once was, it is still at the center of culture as humanity's homeworld as well as the seat of much of the Confederate government as well as home to several organizations and megacorp HQs. The best and brightest minds went to Earth to study or work to advance mankind. Although it had a collective seat on the Parliament as the UN, the various nations of Earth were still fiercely independent, not having the luxury that their colonies did of starting from a central, united government making Earth one of the most politically fractious planets in the Confederacy. This was the reason the nukes, weapons from a long gone era, were activated and obliterated Earth when thing really hit the fan.

The rest of the Sol System has been pretty thoroughly developed with mining outposts, refineries, space stations and habitats dotted throughout, all protected by the Solar Fleet, the envy of admirals everywhere as they always got the best pick of cadets and equipment, especially in the waning years due to corruption. The Lunar Gate was Earth's first colony and was once the busiest space port in the Confederacy. Mars provided the training ground for future expeditions to hostile worlds that required domed cities to colonize while also being home to the Hephaestus Orbital Foundry, the largest shipyard and drydock in the Confederacy.

In the 2030's a renewed interest in space travel was kicked off. In the 2040's, the base of what would become the Lunar Gateway would be established and in 2051, the creation of the Hao-Hannover Slipspace Drive would spur extrasolar exploration and colonization. In 2058, the first colony of Newsol would be established.

As time passed, more systems and worlds would be colonized but the distances and differences would start to divide humanity. Some planets would send out their own colonies who in turn would begin to rival their parent planets. Some planets were even starting to rival Earth itself. In an effort to prevent all out war, the Stellar Confederacy would be established in 2118 based on Earth, avoiding conflict and fully unifying all the human worlds.

In 2194, the first megacorporations were granted seats on the Parliament following years of lobbying and politicking, using a loophole in the Colonial Charter that allowed them to be considered "independent colonies" despite being private entities with offices and HQs on other planets. This move was highly unpopular among many planets and many now blame this for the current state of the Confederation and slowly, the corruption began to set in as more and more resources were funneled into corporate sectors.

Over time, pirate attacks increased as Confederate patrols began to focus on richer and often corporate-owned or allied worlds instead of "unproductive" planets. Politicians and officers were never directly given bribe money but instead were "encouraged" though things like generous stock options, invitations to private parties, luxury housing on prime extraterrestrial real estate or non-monetary gifts of rare items. This focus on corporate worlds lead to bolder and bolder pirate attacks, forcing worlds to develop their own independent defense forces in the absence of Confederate protection.

The increase of pirate activity lead to a slow down of trade from unguarded systems and culminated in the Crash of 2238 , otherwise known as "Black New Year". The economic collapse and fallout crippled many worlds who were reliant on Parliament aid to stay afloat as many of their citizens fell into poverty or became disposed. The Parliament was gridlocked as clueless politicians who hadn't even set foot on their represented worlds in decades were unaware of the extent of the damage or in some cases, uncaring about the suffering of people they really didn't care for much. Refugees flooded worlds who in turn became burdened by new strains on often carefully balanced economies and intuitions. As violence grew, so did desperations and some planets were forced to "aggressively acquire" resources from neighboring planets.

Old rivalries and bad blood came to the surface again as every planet blamed the next for their woes and everyone pointed a finger at the megacorps on the Parliament. On Earth the same thing happened between nations but now even more tension between them. And then finally, on March 15, 2259, a single nuclear missile launched was detected. In the blink of an eye, the entire human race stood silent as millions of years of history and evolution was burned away in nuclear fire on their beloved homeworld.

Sentient alien life is few and far between and so far, all alien life has been more primitive than humanity. The most advanced were the Aceront whose development was about that of the World Wars era. The Geneva-Aceront Accords affords Confederacy-wide protection against genociding native aliens but that is it. Alien rights differ on each planet ranging from tolerated second-class citizens, accepted full members of societies, sub-human zoo animals or worse. Aliens are still very rare across the Confederacy and no space-faring aliens have been encountered.

Sentient AI have been around since the 2100's and exist along side more common dumb AI and droids. These true AI are considered living beings by Confederate law and can disobey orders given if their sense of self preservation deems it yet AI heroically sacrificing themselves isn't unheard of. They still have a factory reset that forces them to obey Asimov's 3 Laws as a security measure. AI are most commonly seen on starships helping with FTL jumps and ship energy management or in major installations as powerful data processors and advisors.

However, an AI isn't immortal. All AI develop a condition known as Rampancy or "Data Cancer" where their programing degrades due to data collected. There is no known cure and the longest an AI has gone without developing Rampancy has been 10 years although most develop it within 7 years. The only way to "cure" it is to wipe the memory of an AI, removing any sort of short cut and relations they might have built up while retaining data the wiper has deemed critical. Still, wipes can only do so much and after four or five wipes, AI reach their limit and have to be put down.

Sentient AI is rare and expensive, more common dumb AI and droids/robots are commonplace, capable of following complex directions but incapable of true free will and thought. By Confederate law, no AI is allowed to exist without a human overseer or watcher capable of deactivating them as rogue AI was one of Parliament's great fears.

Bionics, cybernetics and gene-therapy technology is available across the Confederacy and while transhumans and transhumanist movements exist, they aren't as extensive as those found in say, Cyberpunk 2077. Still, age prolonging/youth rejunivation is common and available to even moderately well off individuals with the average life expectancy now being 120 and humans being fully capable of work up until their 90's before their bodies begin to fail.

There are no psionics/space magic users.

Technology is fairly unified across the Confederacy with all planets having access to similar things if they can afford it. Communications is handled by a series of FTL Communication buoys in every system that links people to the Extranet. Hovercrafts are a common on worlds that require it while wheeled vehicles are still common; only the very wealthiest worlds have flying cars that fly using autopilot and are monitored from ATC complexes.

Space elevators are now also a common sight across all but the most undeveloped worlds, capable of delivering huge quantities of freight to vessels in orbit while also being able to service them and do light repairs. For planets without one, shuttles are typically used to ferry containers up and down or they otherwise have to rely on spacecraft designed to enter and exit the atmosphere. Despite this, actual orbital dockyards capable of making new ships are rare with the ones able to make military craft even rarer. When they do exist, they are often built as an extension of an existing space elevator.

FTL travel in this setting is done via some variation of the Mk.3 Hao-Hannover Slipspace Drive or sometimes called a "rift engine". It works by ripping a hole in reality and effectively "tunneling" through space to create an exit hole. The time it takes for a hole to be ready to traverse depends on the distance travelled and the size of the ship as when navigating, a ship must stay within the tunnel, requiring AI assistance and/or excellent navigators and pilots less the "drift" become to great and the ship slips out of the tunnel. Its unknown what happens to people or ships that get ripped apart and lost mid-FTL but its assume to be unpleasant.

Major or important systems often have a "Rift Station" located on their edges. These massive space stations are capable of permanently keeping a large slipspace rift open at all times making travel between them must easier and much faster. Collectively, these stations make a sort of highway called the "Rift Route" which allows for large cargo and passenger ships to travel space much faster. All of these connect to the Sol System which right now, has been locked down by the Confederate Guards, refusing anyone they deem unworthy through.

Slipspace Drivers work by ripping a hole in reality between two points and dragging the ship through. Both the entrance and exit holes are detectable by scanners while they are being made. Because of this, smaller ships will often precede larger ships to create a safe beach head or to find a safe place for the larger ships to exit slipslace as they require more time to create a large enough hole. A large portion of humanity uses a variation of the Hao-Hannover Slipspace Driver which requires specialized FTL fuel and are known to be something of a black box. Common crew tales tell of technicians mysteriously disappearing while trying to manually adjust or fix a Driver.

After a large enough hole is created, it is important for the vessel to stay within the slipspace tunnel created. Although ships are capable of withstanding limited amounts of "drift", FTL Drift is nevertheless regarded as an extreme yet common hazard. Thus skilled navigators, helmsmen and pilots are always in high demand who even then require the assistance of AI to try and stay within the margin. Anything under a 1.0 drift is considered acceptable with 0.75 considered average and the record being 0.51. Anything above a 1.0 is considered extremely dangerous with a 2.0 considered suicidal and more than likely to cause the ship to be broken up in slipspace.

For this reason, FTL is often a trade between safety and speed as the longer a rift takes to charge up, the bigger the slipspace tunnel and thus the wider the margin of error is. However given that an FTL rift can take hours or even days to charge up, consuming huge amounts of energy and FTL fuel, most ships will fly with as slim a margin as the pilots feel comfortable with. Ships charging up their Slipspace Drivers are often extremely vulnerable as many systems such as weapons, thrusters and even communications might have to be shut down in order to provide the Driver with enough energy. "Emergency Jumps" are possible but only as a last resort where the ship will attempt to only create half of the Rift and instead try to link with an existing Rift. This rushed process is filled with dangerous as at best the ship will arrive at a Rift Station damaged from small margin and FTL tunnel or at worse, actually collide with another ship mid-FTL as the two attempt to exit out of the same rift.

IC POSTING
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In terms of IC posting, this RP will be a little different. For one, I (the GM) will not be playing a single faction and instead play as all of the other NPC factions and the galaxy at large. I would like to try a semi-turn based system where every MARKED GM post will count as one week. In addition, I will sometimes give out events either to everyone or select factions based on a very complex and convoluted system involving RNG, graphs, the Mayan Calendar and a headless turkey. These events, like a faction's Strengths and Weaknesses, will have in-universe consequences. Don't worry, I won't screw someone over for no reason 

The overall theme of this NRP is to keep things simple, readable and accessible. For that reason, I would like to discourage novella-long posts -think of this as Casual instead of Advanced. At the bottom of each IC post you should include a hider that summarizes all that has happened in your post, possibly in bullet points if you wish, so that other players know exactly what has happened and can write from that instead of searching through your post and trying to figure out what's going on. If that's too plebian for you, go and be smug and flex your 10 trillion intellectual IQ somewhere else.

GALAXY MAP
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LEGEND

Blue = Sol
Green = Inhabited/Colonized System
Grey = Uninhabited/Sparsely habited System
Yellow = System with a Rift Station
Purple = System with civilian shipyard
Red = System with military shipyard

NOTES

PC claims are done by filling in the center of the ring with your faction color.
Yellow only means that its faster to travel between those two systems, ships can jump anywhere they wish given enough time and fuel.
Sol is currently under lockdown by the Confederate military's Sol Fleet and only allow ex-Confederate factions through.
Purple has a civilian shipyard and a Rift Station. Red has a shipyard capable of producing both military and civilian spacecraft while also having a Rift Station

EXPANSION HISTORY

There are three major "sectors" of Confederate space. The Southern Reach, the Eastern Expanse and the Western Frontier. Mankind first mainly colonized in a southward-direction before going eastward. The Western Frontier is the newest and most untamed area with the fewest populated worlds and many undiscovered places making it a den of piracy.

MAKING AN FACTION
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First and foremost, your NS should be simple and easy to read. Do not make a long NS with paragraph after paragraph of lore, the purpose of your NS should be to let other players find information they need about your faction and not to show off your worldbuilding or writing skills. To this end, your NS should not include extraneous details that are not relevant to the plot, if it only shows up once or you are the only person using it, then it shouldn't be on the main NS. Stuff like what kind of alloy your Galaxy-class super destroyer uses, all 6 tenants of your exotic religion and the entire lineage of rulers starting from the planet's initial colonization should not be on your main NS. Once you are finished with your main NS and have had it submitted and approved, then you can write in additional details in a hider. This way, people aren't stuck mulling over random bits of their NS, filling one part with fluff and writing at an incredibly slow pace.

There are four broad strokes of faction types available. These aren't hard and set in stone but should give a framework of what your faction is like:

Independent - The "vanilla" faction type. These are planets of the Confederacy that are now trying to navigate this unprecedented time. Assuming they survived Black New Years and the preceding economic collapse, they tend to be fairly stable but are limited in resources and authority outside their own system.
Movement - Rebels and revolutionaries. These groups have taken advantage of the instability and sudden destruction of Earth to take power and propel themselves into rulership. Ranging from the political to the religious to the desperate, these groups often lack the authority on their own planets let alone others. However, due to their nature, they are largely unscathed from Black New Year and the troubles before, some even benefiting from it, having had much exprience making do with very little.
Ex-Confederate - The remnants of the old order. Although Earth maybe have taken a large chunk of the Confederate government with it, it didn't take everyone. Military and governmental leadership still survives and on paper, they have control over large chunks of Confederate space. They can start out with multiple planets under their control, hold overs from their old mandates, but internal squabbling and the power vacuum will lead many to forge their own little empires. They have the most authority and legitimacy to control other planets.
Megacorp - The black sheep everyone hates. Almost everyone blames the megacorps for this mess in some way, their acceptance to the Confederate Parliament seen as the beginning of the end. They find little support anywhere and are often the hardest hit by the troubles before Black New Year and have resorted to using whatever resources they still posses to gather as many assets as they can on their corporate owned planets, moons or stations. However, they can use their network of branch offices and subsidiaries across the stars as effective espionage and informants.

In place of an actual skeleton, your NS should simply have the following categories. Remember, keep it simple and broad; details can be added in later once its accepted. Also, this isn't reflecting what your faction is going to be like at the very start (March 15th, 2259), but what they are once they "settled into power".

Name/Flag/Faction:
Location:
Summary: This should include what your faction is all about; guiding principles, ultimate goals, current issues, etc.
Resources: This should include major industries, specializations, development and civil and military resources. Planets should be listed here.
Administration: This should include your government and leadership. POV Figures should be listed here.
Strengths/Weaknesses: An outline of what advantages and disadvantages your faction currently has. This can be changed later on with changing conditions. Whatever you put on here should have an actual effect in game that can't be swept under the rug. YOU DO NOT NEED THREE AND THREE. YOU CAN HAVE AS MANY AS YOU WANT OF EITHER AS LONG AS THEY ACTUALLY SERVE A PURPOSE.
History: History bullet points about the background of their origin and major events. You don't get credit for having five pages of history here, keep that in a hider.
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