datadogie — Roleplayer Guild

Here we go! I finished up my nation, a large collective of people called The Magpies!

Name of Nation: The Magpies

Summary-in-a-sentence: Why live small on the ground when you can live large in space?

The Pica, also known as the Pica Pica (the Scientific name for the Magpie bird), a ship that started as a large colony vessel that was enroute to Mars from Earth but decided to start it’s own life among the stars and not on some dusty planet. Now, the Pica is a colossal ship grown many times it’s original size from hard work and engineering skills of it’s inhabitants. Most food is grown internally, enough to sustain them and their children, but in a few cases is needed to be sourced externally if mistakes happen with hydroponics, and additionally luxury food items (and a large amount of luxury items that are not their own creations and exports) need to be imported, by credit or item trade. Water is gained from mining asteroids for ice, which provides them with enough water to drink and shower with, and interior purification plants help preserve what water is flushed down the bowl. At present, the Magpie has a whopping population of one point three million people, and is steadily growing.

At the top of the Magpies is someone known as Core. Core is not actually a person, at least, any more, but is the former captain who has had everything in his brain uploaded into Pica in order for the Magpies to continue under his direction. He watches through every camera, every sensor, and everything else within or connected to Pica.

Whilst Core has ultimate power, underneath him is The Silver Queen (or King, depending on gender). The Silver Queen is an official elected by the Magpies every five years to make decisions just like a president, but is underneath Core in government ranking. The Silver Queen or King is given a code that can delete Core if he for some reason starts to break down in programming, a code which changes after every Silver Queen is elected so each one receives a unique code. However, the Silver Queen or King who does so must do so only for the good of the people, and so if Core is shut down, the Silver Queen must die by starvation in front of her people.

That brings us to the final member of the Government; if Core is shut down by the Silver Queen, the Golden Servant will take her place in power until a new Queen is elected. Though not having any real political power in the Magpies, it is very well known that the Golden Servant is perhaps one of the most powerful people in the government system. Serving as a direct servant to Core and the Silver Queen, the Golden Servant can have a lot of sway in convincing the Silver Queen to pick a certain route of option, and is a top-tier adviser to both, Golden Servants being written into law as serving from youth until death as servant and adviser. The Golden Servant is a random child chosen by Core at birth, and is a great honour for the family the Golden Servant comes from, as it escalates them in social level to the highest points and grants them very good quarters, though not as good as the Golden Servant when he grows old enough to move into his own royal quarters.

Other points of the Magpies’ Government is that the Silver Queen (and by extension, the Golden Servant) have a government office that work for them, including some diplomats. Some areas of the Pica have locally elected councillors that can make decisions in their area, such as adjustments to certain procedures in that area, so long as it abides by Magpie General Law.

The Magpies are well-set economically, with trade open to all with both credits and items, such as spare resources. They often do not trade out items they need, such as food, but will happily intake that resource, providing their own goods in return. With patented designs, they earn a hefty income by trading off tools and various other technological goods - they have the mindset to known that even if they create something they may not use, they can look at it and determine if it is useful to others such as dirtsiders, and trade it off if it is, sometimes even mass-producing such tradeable tools if they have solid patents. They are swift to sue if they see someone unauthorised creating or using their tools, and use various goods-control methods to ensure their exports are used for what they are intended for and not reverse-engineered or reproduced.

There are two sections of the Magpie Military; the Marines and the Navy. The Magpie Military protect both the inside of the Pica and the outside, with Marines acting as the police force as well as the military on the inside, and the Navy with it’s ships on the outside (as well as marines on those ships).

The Magpie military is securement-based. Most military operations of the Magpies consist of ensuring there is enough left to be salvaged and either used as a whole or torn apart and used to help expand the Pica. They will not however hesitate in destroying something that is too much of a risk to try and secure. With their Pica, a ship, being their home, the Magpie Military will do everything it can to minimise damage to it and protect the families living within.

Their ships are usually built for one of two purposes; Boarding And Takeover, or Devastation. The Boarding ships are often used when a threat is light enough that it is able to be boarded, and most of the time aren’t boarding ships per se. Some of the Boarding ships are designed to make ships ready to board before the action boarding ships come in - this means weapons that are oriented toward disabling the ship, with weapons targeting weapons and drive systems to prevent the ship fighting back or fleeing, and high-powered lasers to clean up if it comes to close range. The actual boarding ships either lock on and burn through, or use pod-deployed Magpie Marines to smash through the hull and invade the inside by force if burning through is either not an option or too risky. Marines with boarding gear are usually ultra-heavies, wearing armoured suits in order to force the crew into submission or eliminate them if necessary.

Devastation ships are ships built with the purpose of destroying a foe with overwhelming firepower, and dealing as much damage as possible in the shortest amount of time in order to neutralise a threat entirely. If a Devastation-type ship asks you to surrender, if you do not do so after the first communications message, you’ll find yourself with heavy weapons relentlessly barraging you, around you, and more Magpie Devastator-type ships moving into position to neutralise the threat to the Pica and the Magpie People. Devastator-ships do not hesitate, and only stop once you have sent a surrender notification, in which they won’t even let you flee, they’ll call in Boarding ships to take everyone prisoner.

In general, the Magpie Navy has nothing larger than a frigate, however it sacrifices a lot of commodities onboard those ships for weapons space. This is balanced out by ships returning to dock with the Pica every few days after their outgoings, and ships operating at long-range getting their pay multiplied if warranted. The reason for their ships being small in class is that a lot of the resources go into expanding and maintaining Pica, and because the Pica is so large that it can fit a few drydock bays inside of it, where ships can move inside and be worked on from top to bottom for everything from general maintenance, but more commonly for large-scale maintenance and refits.

Magpies follow the rule of ‘finders keepers’ outside of the Pica or it’s guardian ships of the navy. A ship that has ended up abandoned by all hands or involved in some form of accident that leaves the ship inoperable will often find itself with several Magpies circling like vulture. If someone tries to argue that it’s their ship, and the Magpies can’t have it? That’s their problem, unless there is at least one person on board or the ship is remotely controlled (outside of a sweep zone around the Pica for the latter, that is) the Magpies will swoop in and take it, claiming maritime rights of acquiring derelict ships. Their ways have gotten to the point that some insurance brokers even have clauses in regards to what happens insurance-wise if the insured ship or it’s contents end up in the hands of the Magpies, and some people sometimes will even leave a ship out there for the insurance money and claim it was just stolen from them.

Magpies are loyal to themselves first and non-Magpies second. That doesn’t mean they won’t offer a massive amount of trust to non-Magpies, but if the Magpies are crossed then they’ll most likely demand compensation. If the compensation is given, no harm as the problem was corrected, however if no compensation or apology is given, the Magpies do anything from closing off trade to using loopholes in the law to start hijacking ships.

The Magpies have their own laws just like everywhere else, and many of those laws are common laws you would find everywhere else - no burglary, no stabbing eachother to death in a hidden nook in reactor bay seven. The death sentence is common for those who have commited higher crimes, with the Magpies fully accepting of such a sentence for criminals; one less person to eat food and breathe oxygen.

However, where they have their good, the Magpies can also be cruel. A criminal who committed a crime, particularly those in higher crime who have little more hope than death, can volunteer for various other punishments as substitutes, such as experimentation or torture, so long as they have a chance to live. In some cases, they do. In most cases, they do not survive, and in others, they live an endless life of indenture in a project by some labrats wanting to increase the strength of the Magpies.

The Magpies were once not called the Magpies, nor were they their own independent nation. The Magpies used to be colonists, on a ship headed from Earth to Mars. They were an unhappy bunch, a majority being engineers and other jobs working for corporations that underpaid them for their hard work. Nonetheless, they were forced to work, as per contracts, as per life.

And then something went wrong. The Pica lost power and was left drifting slightly off course, but it was bad enough that they were on a near-collision with the sun. What was left of the ship knew that they wouldn’t hit the sun, but they would come near enough that they were all going to be cooked alive, which would be worse. The crew worked overtime with the help of engineers that were on board the ship as part of the colonists, whilst distress signals were sent out, requesting help. For forty two hours there was no help, until a ship docked with them.

What turned out to be help quickly turned out not to be, as the light frigate that had docked with them appeared to actually be pirates, finding an easy ship to loot basic supplies from. The Pica’s residents were not having any of it however, and stormed the pirate ship with anything they could find, taking losses but managing to take over the ship.

It was there that the Magpies really were formed. They salvaged part of the pirate ship, using it to fix the Pica. A look at the sensors showed that, despite time passing before the original distress signals, no rescue was on it’s way. And it was there that the Magpies decided to form an independent nation. Taking the pirate ship with them, they moved into the asteroid belt before anyone knew that they had gone missing, and went to work.

The Magpies, whilst nobody knew them, started off illegally. With an entire colony ship to feed, they turned to piratry themselves, hijacking ships and linking them up with the Pica to offer more living space to those on board. It was a year before anyone actually noticed anything happening - a corporation noticed a big shipment had gone missing, losing them millions of credits, and investigated. Pica was reported by the investigator as being a ‘supership’ at that time; ships were no longer crudely welded onto Pica, but were now being torn to pieces and being built on as expansions. Computers could detect room layouts and thus determine the classes of ships, but couldn’t place what the rooms were now actually used for; Glasgow-class frigates’ missile bays were detected in a network of Snowplow-class freighters that had their cargo bays now turned into rooms that weren’t half-bad. This of course prompted response. The Pica was involved with several ship engagements as it grew up, with the victor sending shuttles out to grab pieces of the loser to melt down and then use as new pieces to the supership.

Soon, due to it’s size, Pica had to move out of the asteroid belt. By this point, it was far too big for anyone to reasonably stop without sending a small battlegroup to do so, and nobody was willing to do that because they had no idea what hidden surprises that the Pica had. It was there, in that newly strong position, that Pica could declare itself an independent nation. A new, formally established nation meant new opportunities. Trade opened up, people started to move into the Pica (and some moved out), and the Magpies became their own nation and a place to live just like anywhere else.
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