Keyguyperson

You are sitting in the back of a cop car with the avatar above... (Game)

Let's not meet your friends. Because I'm afraid.

Men vs. Women Race to 1000

248

I swear, this is playing out like WWI.

Google Picture War

You are sitting in the back of a cop car with the avatar above... (Game)

I get the feeling you like the color black.

Men vs. Women Race to 1000

247

Tell me your porn star name

Major General Sideburns

Ashes to Ashes, a freeform Sci-Fi Fantasy NRP. (Always Accepting)

@Keyguyperson
I'd only want KeyGuy to be a co-GM if he takes a more active role. When stuff gets heated, it doesn't matter if there is a co-GM or GM, for the most part, it's left untouched or unenforced. Since KeyGuy has a history- I mean no offense, mind you- of being a somewhat distant observer, rather than an active moderator.

If he's going to be as active and involved as past experience, then I would say KeyGuy is not suited for the task.

@WilsonTurner

*Raises hand*

"This guy is comepletely right."

Ashes to Ashes, a freeform Sci-Fi Fantasy NRP. (Always Accepting)

[Work in Progress]
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
So I've two things in mind. One is familiar to some of you, though it is different. It's fairies In Space! along a semi-sentient magical hyperspace path that lets anyone walk from world to world (at the Path's pseudo-random whims), if you can find it in the first place.

The other is a B-Movie tech "United States", with Flying Saucers, ray guns, glowing green goo, and the word "Atomic" slapped onto everything. Oh, and werewolves, swamp-things, blobs, and witches (some of which serve in the military). That one still needs the most work, especially to tone it away from pure comedy into something slightly more reasonable.

Option One

Working on: Name, Species, Government, Tech, Magic, Culture, Other

Name of nation: The Faerie Inns

Summary in a Sentence: Fairies living in hyperspace that can literally walk between worlds (and so can everyone else, mostly).

Species: Fay or Fairy

Description of government: Federation of four independent city-states, all existing on locally-stabilized hyperspace nodes along the Fairy Path.

Finn's - A recently rebuilt bar at which nobody speaks of the former establishment, lest they be banned, but otherwise resembles a merry pub (with rooms for rent up top!) in the middle of a large blast crater. The establishment is rather dwarfed by the trading boomtown which surrounds it, all owned and leased out by Finn's.
The Tawdry Oyster - A tropical resort boasting live mermaids (stay there too long and risk becoming one!). Like Finn's, The Oyster rents out land to other guests. Stringent guidelines (and pricing) make the Oyster the locale for only the richest, beautiful, and most famous of species' celebrities.
Marblehead Inn and Suites - A towering modern edifice that adds more floors as people climb the stairs, despite the owner's best efforts to get the building to stop already. If you don't want to be found, you have a chance of ending up here for a while. Ironically, it's a good place to "lay low", despite its skyscraper nature.
The House at the End of the Road - Which has various names, (The House, House on the Hill, Quiet Hill Inn, 1408 Elm Street, etc.) but invariably appears to travelers with no other choice in lodgings and a desperate need for them. Rather spooky, but only at night.

Description of military: Each Inn-Between-Worlds is responsible for its own defense, and each has wildly different strategies to that effect. For instance, The House relies on hexes and terrifying glamours, which ultimately costs its residents dearly each time it has to defend itself. Happily for the House, it's usually terrifying enough to make most would-be invaders not bother after the first few nights. Finn's takes rather the opposite approach, preferring to be such a valuable trading hub for everyone that nobody would want to invade and everyone wants to defend it.

The Tawdry Oyster has the most familiar military, consisting of a small number of legions fit for policework and defense, and all with a maritime theme. Meanwhile, the Marblehead Inn and Suites has no military. The ever-growing staff can barely keep up with the building as it is; a large number of bellhops and concierges are their best option. However, the Marblehead usually opts for retreating up a few floors. Once they even tricked an invasion force into taking a recently-installed elevator to the top floor. It's said that, late at night, you can still hear distant dings and screaming.

Technological Overview: The technology level varies massively from one individual to the next. The Fay themselves generally invent nothing, preferring to steal from other races (and even steal the scientists of the other races) when they feel so inclined. Yet, they have two great claims to fame: the Fairy Path, created by the outcast fairy Euryale. A living entity comprised of beautifully subtle aetherfied hyperspace tunnels, the Path is a series of trails threading through most known worlds. Literally - the Fay can walk from world to world. Of course, so can anyone else who stumbles upon them. Not that they'd notice - one of the Path's many Glamours make each transition from world to world seamless. You only realize you're no longer in Kansas when it's far too late. And walking the Path is dangerous - some trails lead to airless moons, glassed planets, and frigid ice worlds. The routes change according to the Path's inscrutable whim, influenceable only by Queen Titania herself (recently missing). The Fay themselves, of course, know how to navigate the Path; it's part of the Glamours lacing the thing. Like all Fairy magic, however, it's thwarted by radiation. The Fairy Path has learned to stay away from highly-populated technological areas, sticking to the deep woods where at all possible. Fewer people usually means less radioactivity.

Their other claim to fame is the reasons that the locally-stabilized hyperspace nodes still exist, despite the planet Faerie (the heart of the Path) mysteriously disappearing. Each Inn-Between-Worlds has a stabilizer, powered by the blood sacrifice of a specific type of individual once each relative year. The type of individual varies for each inn; the Marblehead requires a cold, logical thinker; the Tawdry Oyster requires a beautiful seductress; Finn's needs someone with wealth that yearns for more; and the House at the End of the Road requires a brash adventurer.

A minor achievement are Fairy Tokens, which allow other species to use the Path to walk to a specific node. Each token is keyed to a specific Inn (though they could be keyed anywhere, in theory; you'd just have to make them wherever you wanted to go). Far and away the most tokens are keyed to Finn's

Magical Overview:
Glamours are an innate ability shared by all Fay. A glamour is an illusion cast on either themselves or a small object altering its appearance. Many glamours are incredibly elaborate, as it's considered a marker of high status to have a detailed glamour. Queen Titania, the former head of state, could change what she appeared to be wearing based on how she was feeling at the moment. Fairy gold is another example of a glamour: exchanging a few leaves that look and feel like gold for favors is an old trick. The more tech-savvy Fay can fool e-banks into believing funds have been transferred - for a day or so, anyway.

On top of glamours (or perhaps as a subset of glamours), Fay can cast simple prestidigitations - real-life magic tricks. Levitating small objects, turning paper roses into real ones with a flash of fire, making objects disappear, increasingly complicated card tricks, that sort of thing.

Another aspect is curses and blessings. Fay magic affects processes. They can curse or bless items and organics, causing harvests to be particularly good or bad, or certain industrial processes to function foully or fairly. Tech-savvy Fay can even bless code to execute to the author's intentions, and not what they mistakenly typed.

Finally, there are hexes. Developed by the House on the Hill after the planet Faerie mysteriously disappeared and the Path got "ornery", Hexes are a dark subset of Fae magic requiring sacrifice. The more powerful the effect, the greater the sacrifice.

Cultural Overview: Fairies are vain, fickle creatures that make ironclad bargains (which they take seriously, if only at face value) and believe wholly in the power of the individual.

History: Someone invaded their system, but then Eurayle came along and whisked their home planet into hyperspace, creating the path and four natural nodes of stability. Eventually enterprising Fay set up Inns on said nodes. These nodes became meeting spots for various cultures that stumbled upon the Path, whether Fay or otherwise. Then the home planet of Faerie mysteriously disappeared, and the Path began to unravel. Until, one night, the House on the Hill stabilized the Path with sacrifices out of nowhere.

There's been a relatively easy peace since then. Finn's has continued on as the main meeting place and tradinghouse between worlds and cultures, the Marblehead continues to be an excellent place to disappear for a while (some whole kingdoms have been known to take up residence from time to time), and the Tawdry Oyster remains an excellent tourist attraction. However, the House just gets more and more creepy.

Other:

Option Two

If the Path is a no-go:

Name of nation: Definitely Not the United States of Space America

Species: Conceivably not human

Description of government: A government which in no way resembles a federal republic

Description of military: Something which is not a powerful professional military relying on carriers and long range missile subspacemarines

Technological Overview: Not a relatively advanced technological power that has a suspicious resemblance to bad sci-fi movies

Cultural Overview: Not freedom-loving interventionists

History: Not born from a rebellion of some colonies of a very powerful-at-the-time empire

Other: THIS IS IN NO WAY A B-MOVIE-TECH UNITED STATES TRANSPORTED TO SPACE. WHY ON EARTH WOULD YOU THINK THAT.

@Queen Raidne

Since I'm currently listening to The U.S. Field Artillery, I can't help but tell you to do the latter. Then again, the Fae are always fun.

Ashes to Ashes, a freeform Sci-Fi Fantasy NRP. (Always Accepting)

Similarly we can say that the language of this ancient civilization remained and now forms the basis of the common tongue across the galaxy (dubbed as "Galactic Basic" or whatever).

@Willy Vereb

This is a good idea. I like this idea.

I'm not so hot about the ship classifications thing. I mean, civilizations could easily have different names for different ship types (Like battleships that can only fire missiles that they call mines), which would spice things up a bit. I suppose we could instead have universal size or weight classes.

Ashes to Ashes, a freeform Sci-Fi Fantasy NRP. (Always Accepting)

Nowhere near done, still very much a WIP. Just wanted to put it here so y'all know I'm totally going to be in this.

Hider

Name of nation: League of the Twenty Worlds (Falasolsi lasi la Fafare Sirere)

Species: Human

Description of government: The League of the Twenty Worlds is an oligarchy, with the power of the government split between three people. They are known as the "Domila Refafa", or Eternal Three. Each underwent an extremely complicated and dangerous procedure in the distant past, which transferred their consciousness to a newly grown body. Said bodies had been genetically modified to be immune to aging, making them effectively immortal.

Neither controls a specific section of the nation, and they instead act more like a council, discussing different matters until a compromise is reached. Unlike most examples of councils, however, a unanimous decision must be reached. Originally, two out of the three had to agree, but this led to two of them always supporting each other and locking out the third from having any actual input. Humorously, this was the result of simple interpersonal loyalties and not a planned conspiracy.

Each planet has its own governor, whom is put in place by the Eternal Three. The governors are not immortal (the technology has long since been lost), but do rule either for life or until they are removed by the Eternal Three. They are allowed to govern their own world as they see fit as long as they are in power. While this gives rise to a variety of different planetary governments, the Eternal Three tend to remove any governor which crosses the line and turns their world into an anarchic or totalitarian planet.

Officials appointed (or elected according to the system set in place) by the governor receive all their power from said governor, who in turn receives all of their power from the Eternal Three. In this way, it is similar to a feudal system. However, only the Eternal Three are permitted to own starships. This makes the inner conflicts that tend to plague normal feudal systems impossible, as no planet can attack another. Vessels can be leased to governors and lower officials by the Eternal Three, which is often done when a rouge governor is overthrown. Vessels are temporarily given to rival governors, whom then do the dirty work of deposing the rouge governor. The only reason this is actually done is to placate the governors.

Description of military: The League's military is divided into two divisions: the Planetary Forces and the Starborne Forces. The Planetary Forces are an amalgamation of the Navy, Army, and Air Force. One could think of them as the Marine Corps on steroids. They are weaker than their analogues in other nations, however, due to the lack of conflict within the League. Their strength lies in defense rather than attack, and have no interstellar vessels of their own.

In the ground divisions of the Planetary Forces there is a great emphasis placed upon armored vehicles. Many years of constant development has led to a standardized main battletank for the Planetary Forces: the Vector-Type Zero Crewed Tank Walker. The VTCTW (More commonly called the Type Zero) is one of the odder tank designs to come out of humanity. Instead of treads or an antigravity system, it uses a set of six legs to traverse the battlefield. To assist in this is a mass reduction system that utilizes negative matter, as well as magnetic claws at the end of each leg (which also function as grapplers for better traction). This (overcomplicated and unnecessary) system affords it better mobility than more traditional traded tanks, but at the cost of any resemblance of the abstract concept of reliability. The joints in both the legs and claws consistently break down, and without extensive supplies of oil the tanks are immobilized.

To overcome these massive and glaring drawbacks in the design, a set of modules was created that could be attached to the central crew cabin (which also functions as the turret). The very first of these was a pair of treads, which could be fitted in place of the legs. These treads are now used on all tanks while not in battle, as the unreliability of the leg system made marches exponentially longer than they would otherwise be. When a tank's legs are damaged in combat, the treads tend to be fitted if the rest of the tank remains intact long enough to be recovered.

Another major problem with the legs is their vulnerability, as a well-placed shot could easily tilt a tank on its side and immobilize it. An entirely new active defense system was designed for the sole purpose of protecting the legs. Said system (the Plasma-Based Projectile Interception System, colloquially known as Plasma Schürzen) utilizes plasma arc projectors that surround the tank, and activate whenever an incoming projectile is detected by the tank's sensors. Decades of improvement from the earliest version of this system (which originated on Old Earth many centuries ago) has led to a 90% success rate against small arms fire, 60% success rate against cannon shells, a 30% success rate against missiles, and near-complete immunity to random shrapnel. Ten years and countless billions of credits later, the Type Zero is a practical combat vehicle.

Other modules that can be fitted include various different armaments. Fresh off the assembly lines, the tank has an 88mm railgun (which is capable of firing guided missiles), a 7.92mm coaxial coilgun, and a drive system mounted coilgun of the same make. It can carry 92 rounds of railgun ammunition and approx 4,500 rounds of coilgun ammunition.



Technological Overview:

Cultural Overview:

History:

Other: