...every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring — not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive.
-Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot
In early 2118, mankind made first contact with an extraterrestrial civilization.
It was not peaceful.
The Two Year War ended with a stalemate and the retreat of the aliens.
Seventeen billion humans died in the nuclear holocaust. 85% of the human population.
The survivors struggle daily to survive in the middle of a brewing civil war between the surviving human governments.
Humans are a race under threat of extinction.
Welcome to Exodus, the post-apocalyptic science fiction nation roleplay! Prepare to enter a world of pain, suffering and human tragedy as you participate in the days following a catastrophic war which left the human race without a home, making every day a struggle for survival. The Supernations of the solar system have collapsed, giving way to dozens of smaller scattered remnant groups with only one common goal: the continued survival of the human race. The universe of Exodus is not one of joy or hope, but one of human endurance and ingenuity. In this new dog-eat-dog world, the only strategy is to adapt.
Now you too can control the fate of a fraction of the galaxy's last three billion humans, cramped in damaged ships with barely enough food and water to survive for a few months. Industry will have to be rebuilt from the ground up. Mankind will have to find a new place to call home, but whether it will do so in unity or war is up to
you.
A decade-long survey published by the United Nations Statistics Service in January 2100 had proved that which was widely known: the widespread use of technology on Earth and its colonies in the solar system had doubled the life expectancy, reduced human suffering, combated hunger and disease and allowed the twenty billion humans in the Sol system to live comfortable lives. The scars of the Third World War, the limited nuclear exchange that had left much of the Middle East an uninhabitable radioactive wasteland, had healed long before. Several key discoveries during the 21st century, such as commercial nuclear fusion and the invention of the Einstein-Rosen Spacetime Bridge Drive (commonly referred to as the 'Jump Drive') had allowed mankind to expand the frontier of exploration to three adjacent star systems. It was a golden age.
It started with disappearing expeditions in the frontier, beyond Alpha Centauri. A few missing probes at first, then the occasional exploration ship. Within five years, the disappearances had escalated: entire destroyers had gone missing, their quantum entanglement signals disappearing as if they had been wiped away in an instant. The conspiracy theorists cried wolf, the governments tried to cover it up. The incidents became legends, stories to be told at children at night in border colonies to keep them quiet. But on one fateful night in 2118, contact was lost with the Alpha Centauri colony. A few days later, Wolf 359 went silent.
Humanity was unprepared for the invasion.
Charon Outpost lost contact with Earth at 19:29 Standard Earth Time, March 18, 2118. A French destroyer, the Surcouf, was closest to the outpost and made the short jump in Charon's gravity well. Half an hour later, the destroyer jumped dangerously close to the Gandhi Fleet Yards in orbit of Mars, scorched, crippled and missing much of its starboard side. Over half of its 1,000 crewmen had been lost. In the debriefing, the Surcouf's commanding officer spoke of a massive alien fleet that had deployed a nuclear weapon against Charon Outpost and then turned on the destroyer after using an electromagnetic pulse to disable its systems; it had taken almost ten minutes on emergency power to restore jump capability, and by then, the ship's entire starboard side had been devastated by the continued barrage.
Humanity had made first contact.
For the next two years, a losing battle was fought against the alien enemy: the fleets of humanity fell back all the way to Earth before the tide started to turn thanks to the mobilization of the human military-industrial complex. The war ended with over seventeen billion casualties for the human side: Earth, Mars, the colonies, they were all cleansed by nuclear fire and turned into dead wastelands incapable of sustaining life. The green paradise had been reduced to a ruin. The United Nations won the war, but they lost the solar system; the alien fleet retreated, leaving the humans to lick their wounds.
The three billion humans who had survived the onslaught, a fraction of the original population, were left without a home to go to. Most had fled into space using civilian transports or overcrowded military warships of their respective governments. They had limited supplies, limited fuel, limited medicine... Almost half of the survivors were suffering from advanced radiation poisoning, and thousands died every day from either their injuries or the chaos. The United Nations as an organisation nearly ceased to exist as each country focused on the protection of its surviving civilians.October, 2120. Most of the survivors of the apocalypse have fled to the massive fleet in Low Earth Orbit while the governments struggle to meet the day-to-day needs of their citizens. Currency has collapsed, industry has been halted. The fleets of each nation have either banded together in alliances or keep their distance from the others to protect their remaining supplies. The human race faces extinction via starvation. The alien threat remains ever present, leaving the fleets vulnerable to a finishing attack.
An emergency session of political and military leaders has been called aboard neutral ground: the International Space Station, a relic of the early 21st century that was boosted into a high orbit to serve as a museum. Delegates from each Alliance have been invited to discuss the future of humanity.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.By 2118, human technology and science had advanced far beyond anything the science fiction authors of the 20th and 21st centuries could imagine. Commercial fusion, faster than light travel, cybernetics and artificial intelligence, these inventions were just the tip of the iceberg when it came to showing off the technical prowess and ingenuity of man. Before and during the War, human factories formed a gigantic network of production facilities that could fuel the United Nations war machine and satisfy the needs of the twenty billion humans that needed to be fed, clothed, housed and entertained.
But the War changed that. Human industry is in shambles, and while the technology still exists on a theoretical level, producing it in a commercial level has become impossible. Below you can find some information about man's advances in several vital fields.
Power Generation: Ships, factories, weapons, televisions and children's toys all require one thing in common to function: energy. In the 20th century, coal and petrol covered most of humanity's needs for electricity, but the exponential rate at which power requirements grew presented the need for a more drastic source of energy: the atom. Crude fission reactors evolved to Thorium Salt Fission, a safe and abundant energy source, but it wasn't until 2030 that the first commercial Helium-Helium reactor was activated. Its primary fuel, an isotope of Helium with an atomic mass of 3 (commonly referred to as Helium-3) was abundant throughout several moons and gas giants in the Sol system. The tremendous energy density of the fuel and the relative safety of its use over fission have rendered it the primary method of power generation in human domain.
Solar power, geothermal power, wind turbines, radio-thermo-electric generators and combustion engines have remained in some use, but have mostly been phased out. Research into antimatter has yielded promising results, but the focus of the project was shifted to producing antimatter-catalysed nuclear weapons during the opening weeks of the War.
Space Travel: Although chemical rockets remain in use for transferring payloads to Low Earth Orbit and beyond, scientists used the tremendous power of fusion reactors to power electrical propulsion systems such as ion drives (used aboard small automated probes, with amazing fuel efficiency but low thrust) and nuclear thermal rockets or VASIMR engines. These advances reduced travel times between planets in the solar systems to a few days or weeks, but faster-than-light travel was the invention that allowed humans to explore the rest of the solar system and the ones adjacent to it.
The Einstein-Rosen Spacetime Bridge Drive was invented on 2053. Even though the details of its operation have been kept a tightly guarded secret by the corporations and militaries that produce the device, mostly everyone serving aboard a space-faring vessel is aware of its basic function. The desired set of coordinates relative to star constellations and the distance from the nearest gravity well, as well as the projected mass to be transported, are crunched into a supercomputer which calculates the necessary settings for the jump drive to use. Jump accuracy follows the law of diminishing returns, but most jump drives will refuse to jump without precise calculations. Jumping into a nearby planet, or a star, or a planet, are a very real possibility without accurate survey data. The complexity of the jump calculations increases with distance and mass. A dreadnought jumping to an adjacent solar system may take over twenty minutes to 'spool up' its jump drive, including the process of charging the capacitors, while a shuttle ferrying cargo from Earth to Mars may only take a couple of minutes. At the end of the calculation and charge cycle, the jump drive produces a 'bend' in space-time that for an instant makes the two points, the origin and the destination, coexist in the same area of space. The ship crosses the threshold and releases the energy from the drives as heat, radiation and electrical charge that has to either be stored in a capacitor or discharged in the atmosphere of a planet or a starbase.
In short, jumps are instant, but may take a variable amount of time to calculate the jump settings.
Ships: When commercial space travel became a reality, most ships were still based on the spaceplane model: taking after the Space Shuttles of the 20th century, hybrid craft that could fly both in-atmosphere and in space were built to ferry people and cargo both to orbit and destinations beyond. After the first shipyards were constructed in Low Earth Orbit, however, ships that were designed purely for travel in space were designed. They were based on the 'submarine' model: compact frames with tight corridors, heavy armor to protect from asteroid fragments and radiation and reaction control systems to turn around and make micro-maneuvers in space. Design and aesthetics were thrown out of the window in favour of practicality. Artificial gravity was provided by rotation until the invention of the Jump Drive, which gave humanity another significant boost in its travels: the pseudo-Higgs field that the jump drive generated could be focused over a small area (such as a ship) to provide the sense of weight at roughly Earth-level acceleration, but at a significant energy cost.
Military warships were not constructed until the late 2060s, but when they did, the militaries of Earth turned to two types of people to help design them. Naval captains and pilots. The former were arguably the most familiar with the risks of fighting in a deadly environment, especially submarine commanders. A single breach in the hull posed a huge risk to the ship itself. Pilots were far better acquainted with fighting in three dimensions. The result were ships that were almost literally carved out of blocks of metal for their frames, usually some light alloy of aluminum with carbon nanotube supports, and had armor tacked on slots that could be exchanged after damage. Although most military ships above the fighter or shuttle size were not built to be aerodynamic, they tend to follow the shape of a submarine to minimize their profile and thus the chances of getting hit by enemy fire. The bridge, unlike a sea-faring vessel, is dug deep into the ship's armor to protect it from weapons fire.
Over the years, militaries realized that building many small ships was inefficient because of how fragile they were. Material engineering allowed for larger vessels to be built, with sizes dwarfing those of 21st century aircraft carriers. Ships are usually divided into one of several categories:
Fighters (and Bombers) are plane-sized spacecraft, usually with endo-atmospheric capabilities.
Frigates, Destroyers and Cruisers are smaller ships about 100-300m at their widest point, and are usually used as patrol craft or escorts for larger ships. However, their power should not be underestimated. A destroyer with its full armament has enough firepower to wipe out a large city within a few hours, and that is without counting its nuclear arsenal.
Battleships and Carriers are ships 400-600m at their widest point, and serve as the main combat unit of most navies.
Dreadnoughts and Supercarriers are ships that can be up to 1000m at their widest point, and only a handful of them have survived the war. Their tremendous power makes them a force to be feared in any engagement; during the War, they were the primary targets of aliens. Dreadnoughts and Supercarriers also serve as strike group command ships, mobile hospitals, troop transports and nuclear missile silos.
Weapons: Weapons technology is the point where technology developed by man diverges massively from the predictions of science fiction authors. Instead of creating complicated weaponry that could only be explained through technobabble, the engineers of Sol focused on the most raw forms of energy and on the most efficient ways to use it against the enemy. Weapons are divided into three categories, each with its own distinct advantages.
Kinetic Energy Weapons are the simplest weapon that anyone could imagine: hit the target with an object of sufficient momentum and kinetic energy to penetrate its defenses and destroy its vital systems. From the most basic explosion-powered bullets of the 20th century to the advanced railguns of the 21st, no weapon beats the Kinetic Energy Weapon in brute force and simplicity. It is not strange that the bulk of weaponry is based on railgun solutions.
Energy Weapons are a whole different beast: lasers in various spectra can melt away enemy armor, and even though they lack the problem of leading the target because of the speed of light, their range is limited enough that they are usually kept for anti-fighter defense and brawl-range combat. They are extremely wasteful weapons, with efficiency in the low 0.2s, and the waste heat needs to be either radiated into space or stored into heatsinks for venting in a planet's atmosphere. The extreme bulk of the chemical laser and FEL devices limit the use of the weapons to either point defense or the main batteries of capital ships; anything in the middle, and you end up with a waste of space.
Missile Weapons were first used by Nazi Germany during World War II, and have since remained the weapon of choice for aerial and space combat. They range from dumb-firing rocket pods to AI-guided warheads, and their payloads can be anything from a small explosive, to incediary mixtures, to biological weapons, to the devastating nuclear warhead. Missiles are usually launched vertically by Vertical Launch System pods or missile launcher arms, although fighters can mount them under their wings to save space.
Nuclear Warheads: The people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the first to witness the power of the atom in 1945, but they were certainly not the last. The massive arms race during the Cold War left humanity with a vast arsenal of nuclear armaments, but they were only used in early 2034 during a nuclear exchange between Israel and Iran that left both countries in shambles. Pakistan and India joined them a few hours later, transforming the area into a nuclear wasteland for decades to come. But despite the insistence of several of the world's peace organisations, no further regulations were imposed on the research and development of nuclear weapons.
That unwillingness to let go of the weapons of mass destruction may have been the very fact that saved the human race from complete extinction. During the Two Year War, mankind expended over 90% of its stock of nuclear weapons, both ship-to-ship warheads and MIRVs. Old silos found new use in the Battle for Earth, damaging the alien fleet enough for humans to force a stalemate.
From tiny RPG-sized kiloton weapons to the gigantic ICBMs stored in nuclear missile silos, no weapon surpasses the raw energy that nuclear weapons release. Weapons as high as 100 Megatons in TNT-equivalent yield were built before and during the war, two times as powerful as the Tsar Bomba of the 20th century, but all of them were used up fighting the aliens. Although nuclear explosions in space work differently, since there is no air to propagate the shockwave, the heat and radiation is enough to melt entire ships into submission or deliver a fatal dose of radiation to the crew. The most effective means of taking down a ship is a direct hit by a nuclear weapon: the shock propagates through the hull itself, ripping entire sections of the ship apart, the heat melts off a wide area around the impact site, the electromagnetic pulse can take out vital systems such as life support, and the radiation will make damage control a one-way trip for most crewmen.
Getting a nuke through is tricky though: the radiation signature of a nuclear warhead is easy to detect in space, and point defense computers will almost always prioritize shooting down any inbound radiation signatures.
Nation Name: The formal name your nation, fleet or self-governing entity are officially known for, accompanied by 'initials' (e.g. USA, UK) and a location code (eg. US, EN).
Population: The total population of your nation, fleet or self-governing entity (henceforth referred to as 'nation'). Remember that the total human population is three billion; no nation should have over 2,5% of that on their application. A high population may seem like an advantage because of the sheer capacity of getting stuff done, but people need to be fed, clothed, entertained and kept safe. Hauling around a hundred million hungry refugees may not be that good of an idea.
Predecessor/Origin: Some nations may be Sol powers-in-exile (e.g. survivors from the European Union and its fleet), others may be military remnants from UN task groups that met up with refugees, or they could just be a group of people who banded together to survive. Should include a brief history of the nation.
Government: Information about how your nation is governed: is it a constitutional monarchy? A ruthless junta? A 'Democratic People's Republic' that is only 'Democratic', the 'People's' and a 'Republic' in name?
Ethnic Groups: Ethnic groups in percentage of population (e.g. 30% French, 30% British, 14% Australian, 7% Martian).
Civilian Fleet: Information on the size, composition and status of the civilian fleet. Should include any noteworthy vessels such as fuel refineries, fuel tankers, factory ships, auxiliary drydocks and mining ships.
Military Fleet: Detailed composition of the military fleet. Although no hard limit will be placed for the sake of variety, a recommended starting size for a large military fleet is 1-3 capital ships, 3-10 battleships/carriers and 9-20 frigates/destroyers/cruisers, plus any military ships serving a non-combatant role or hybrid such as electronic warfare cruisers, troop or munitions transports. Many of the ships should be damaged from the war.
Military Details: Size of active, reserved and paramilitary/police forces active in your nation. Be aware that even the most heavily militarized nations today (2014) have less than 4.5% of their population serving active duty (North Korea). Also remember that a huge fraction of the human military was decimated during the war. Should include any noteworthy military assets such as the number of tanks, vehicles, powered exoskeletons and nuclear warheads (both anti-ship torpedoes and ground-strike missiles).
Noteworthy Assets: Any noteworthy assets available to your nation at the start of the roleplay, such as large quantities of a valuable commodity or a colony ship.
Supplies (approx.):
Water: x Days/Weeks/Months
Food: x Days/Weeks/Months
Air: x Days/Weeks/Months
Fuel: x Lightyears (Jump Capacity)
Left freeform, just an approximation. Larger fleets naturally consume their supplies faster. Supplies can be gained from a variety of sources, from scavenging destroyed cities, to purifying irradiated salt water, to hydroponic and aeroponic farming aboard ships.