LostKnightsRPG.org

[Rusty]

The universe is big. Really really big. The galactic federation is just as big, which raises some really big questions.

How many races are there? How important are they? How do people get information from place to place? How can the federation even be ruled if it is really that big?

There are a staggering number of races. It's a lot. I won't even go into them all, or even many of them. What is important about how many of them there are, is how many of them are involved. Wars have plagued the universe since people got the idea in the first place, first trying it out on their own races, then on their neighbors, and then really going after it across the stars. Some of these wars were about territory and resources, but after the first few arms of a galactic spiral have been conquered, one has to ask the question about 'why bother anymore' or 'how many blocks of gold do I really need anyway' and others of that sort. But not all races are so reasonable as to question these things, some races have fundamental needs to address. Take the Zorians for instance. The Zorian war threatened all life. Just because. Zorians consume life and only life, and they do so at a staggering rate. It would have certainly taken longer than your standard galactic afternoon for them to wipe out all other life, but the Zorian war prevented their spread and led to their apparent extinction. You see, they don't just consume everyday life like cows and tomatoes, they can only propogate themselves by converting intelligent life into Zorian life. The Skolians posed a similar threat, but thanks to Aternan intervention, did not spread to a universe level threat. The races that are left and making this uneasy peace that is the good ol' GF? Thousands and thousands of them, millions even, but not what there used to be. The ones that are movers and shakers? Far fewer.

People, and information, travel between the galaxies and within the universe in much the same way. They use a very important technology called "superwarp". The origins of Superwarp are not known at all to anyone outside of the most elite levels of government, and it is a technology far more advanced than Warp, or Rainbow Beams, or Trans-Mat, or any of the other daily miracles the federation uses day to day. While warp engines twist space to cause relative motion, and in so doing propel vessels many times the speed of light, even hundreds of times the speed of light, Superwarp twists space and *time*, and creates what is frequently explained as a "causality window."

Imagine that you are at point A, and wish to get to point B. Suppose further that point B is really really really far away. Prohibitively far away. Even with warp. At this point, you have to decide just how important getting to point B really is. If it's not that important, don't bother. If it IS that important, hitch a ride with Superwarp. What you'll do is twist space and time together to create a sort of tunnel through which you can cover millions of light years really quickly. Imagine your position in time and space like a fish swimming through a river. Not a literal river, not a literal fish, but follow me here. Warp lets you move the water faster than the fish can swim. Superwarp lets you open a gap in the water, like a vacuum tunnel, and suck the fish through to a later point. It lets you do so so fast in fact, that there is still a fish shaped hole where you got it from. If that fish then later crosses either the vacuum tunnel or the fish shaped hole, he'll meet himself, shake hands, and just generally agree to not be around anymore.

Superwarp is fundamentally a one way trip. The idea that you could move faster than yourself through time, and cause things to happen earlier than you intended to, is one that the universe is highly uncomfortable with, and occasionally throws a fit about.

More technically, superwarp violates linear causality, if it is ever folded back on itself. You can go one way without that much difficulty, but if you cross your path on the way back, if you intersect your path of travel at any speed, then your position in reality collides with itself, and is undone. This creates a paradox.

Paradoxes are bad. Really bad. The simplest ones just destroy you. Some of these can be really bad anyway, because it's not just people, it's things as well. Suppose you buy a second hand superwarp roadster and take it out for a spin and, without realizing it, cross the pathway that the same roadster had taken before. The roadster ceases to be anymore, but you don't. You're left without a roadster, and little explanation of how you got there, and possibly without a space suit (especially if the suit were on board the roadster when you bought it, tsk tsk.) The worst paradoxes undo everything you did after the point you cross in your superwarp pathway. This causes a great many headaches, and should be avoided at all costs.

In the modern universe, superwarp is used a lot, and for very good reasons. It allows a report to reach it's destination basically before it was sent, at least fast enough to be relevant. The superwarp courier industry thrives, and has since galactic federation hegemony. It allows people to travel to their destinations quickly, and be back before lunch time, as long as they haven't already had lunch before they left. It is considered by some to be trivially easy to avoid crossing a superwarp path and closing a causality window, it is considered by most to be fantastically dangerous to treat such things trivially.

Suppose I bring you a report about enemy fleet movements, and you tell me what to do about them. I then leave to carry out the orders, but I close my window on the way. This is bad. The worst case scenario is that not only do I cease to exist, but the *information* I was carrying ceases to exist, the fleet movements cannot be reported to you now, even by someone else, because I paradoxed out the report, and your orders in response to them. You now cannot learn of those fleet movements, and if you did, you couldn't move the instructions you wanted to give past the upper bounds of warp.

It is because of superwarp that things get along, and it is used a lot, but as sparingly and as carefully as possible. The universe is divided into smaller chunks that are governed basically locally, which are in turn governed even more locally still, ranging from several spiral galaxies down to your local voting district.

The federation can be ruled in much the same way as any country can be ruled; badly. Information moves, albeit slower than most people would like, and certainly slower than gossip. Gossip, mind you, seems to travel even faster than superwarp, and if we could figure out how then we might be able to avoid all of this causality window business and just get on with things.

Peace is difficult to maintain, particularly when everyone seems so dead set against it. The federation is ruled from the Core Worlds, a series of planet sized cities around a commandeered star, which also has the largest fleet of unused superwarp ships. At least one, if not more of these planet sized objects is a supercomputer that helps calculate superwarp trajectories for the couriers and tries to avoid windowing out information, such as census information, tax forms, matching socks, and the like.

Influential people have had to extend their influence father in the GF than ever before, as who really cares about Ursa Minor when we've got problems of our own over here in Zonk or wherever. Therefore, the pool of people available to vote for is unsurprisingly small. One of these people, occasionally called "The Immortal Emperor" or "Abe" if he's not doing anything impressive at the moment is an Aternan who seems bent on governing again. And again. He's held a staggering number of terms as galactic president, and keeps coming back for more. His personal power and influence even when he's not president extend through a great deal of the universe, enough to rival most other politicians.

And that's the basics of it. Please post questions or, if you like, criticism and profanity. As with most things, I'm not necessarily set in stone on every detail, though I'd just as soon not nobble about it more than we have to.

[Liquidprism]

What is a 'nobble'? I would imagine, given the context of the surrounding statement, that its a term used for holding an idea hostage, and asking ransom from a bunch of guys who don't even know who your hostage is. That seems like a pretty silly thing to do, especially if you want money. Well, Im not giving you any money buster.

I will however say, that no matter how paradoxical, your paradoxical technology may be I am prepared to accept it at face value. Mainly to avoid any sort of commitment to an argument that might at any moment reach 'superwarp' speeds and cross itself thus negating the idea of 'superwarp'. I would encourage others to do the same. Unless of course you want to erase 'superwarp' from the fabric of our universe, in which case argue on, and with velocity, from several different angles.

I suppose at this point I am interested to see what happens if 'superwarp' paradoxed itself out of existence. Would that undo all the paradox 'superwarp' pathway crisscrosses had ever caused? Has anyone ever tried to do this? Doesn't it matter that this conversational context is weaving in and out of several tenses, alliterations, and reality walls to try and avoid a potential paradox predicament? What's going on with those socks you mentioned?

[Rusty]

The following is a transcript of a skype-related element of backstory for the game, which had previously only existed in bullet-ed talking points. I haven't cleaned it up yet, but I suppose I could if pressed.

Long long ago, in the early days of federal ascendancy, the universe was divided into millions upon millions of territories

[8:54:34 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Most of these territories were no larger than a galaxy or two, at best

[8:55:12 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The government that would later be called the Galactic Federation had achieved Superwarp through some as yet undisclosed method, but the universe itself was under a grave threat

[8:56:03 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: You see, if a few worlds are threatened, even with superwarp communications, people on the far side of the universe are hardly going to know what is happening, who is involved, or anything like that

[8:56:19 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: but once a threat becomes universal, people perk up and take notice

[8:56:31 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: and the Zorians had returned

[8:57:09 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The first Zorian war was fought by just a few thousand races, and only encompassed a few hundred galaxies

[8:57:43 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: it was an epic battle that had the sad fact of failing to eradicate the Zorian threat. The generals in command had been satisfied with driving the Zorians out of their galaxies.

[8:58:01 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: And so the Zorians returned, as things of their sort tend to do

[9:01:02 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: A young Aternan, a world unkown to most at the time, had assumed the name Commander, and arrived to lead the armies. His charm was unparalleled, his words honeyed nearly beyond recognition, his face beautiful to all, and he rallied not only the armies of the federation, but those of many other worlds outside the federation. He entreated the distant Grimlackians to share their knowledge of higher warp factors than the rest of the galaxy had. He entreated to Dogans to share their capital scale primary beam heat sinks. He entreated races from throughout the universe, many who claimed ignorance of him and his race entirely, to bring their weapons and skills together to make a fleet capable of fighting the Zorians.

[9:02:48 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The Zorian is really a condition that another intelligent life form takes on. Their body dies, and becomes immortal in undeath. The origins of the Zorian condition are totally unknown, and it is actually after the first known species to completely fall to their disease that they are named. In the outer fringes of the galaxy, Zorian incursions were a problem reaching back into antiquity, as their death-like state allowed them to ply the stars even without Warp

[9:02:52 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: They are strong

[9:02:54 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: they are fast

[9:03:10 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: their technology is that of a bygone and lost age, and is frightening in its efficiency

[9:04:30 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: the wisest scholars and most learned historians suggest that the Zorian threat is a remainder of long long ago, before the races that now move amongst the stars had even climbed down from trees or out of the oceans

[9:04:38 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: They have powers of the mind

[9:04:48 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: they can move invisible

[9:04:58 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: they do all these things and more, and their ships behave strangely as well

[9:05:10 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: their blood is infectious, and they feed off of the blood of the living

[9:05:35 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: They perfected their weapons over aeons to their dark purpose.

[9:05:56 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: And so the Commander brought together what forces he could, and fought a losing war against a resurgent Zorian super fleet

[9:06:10 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: the Second Zorian war was the first time fleets of this scale had been assembled, as far as anyone knew

[9:06:31 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: ships beyond counting assembled to join battle against enemies without number

[9:06:53 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: warfare took place at every level, space, land, sea, air, psychic, even dream warfare was a part of this epic conflict

[9:07:11 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: As the battle raged on, the allies of the fledgeling federation faltered in their determination

[9:07:33 AM | Edited 9:07:41 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: "Surely the Zorians won't invade as far as OUR worlds. This is really a Federation problem." They cried.

[9:10:20 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: "Nay" the commander replied. "They will consume your worlds and beyond."

[9:10:35 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: For the Zorian hunger was for life itself, drawing them only to those places where it thrived

[9:11:02 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Gold, Platinum, Uranium, no rare or precious element interested them

[9:11:13 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Every allied ship that fell, became a Zorian ship

[9:11:23 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Their ingenuity was such that they used their very nature as a weapon

[9:12:10 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Their beams targeted shields and fields only, and what followed was a Trans-Mat bio-weapons attack, with a weaponized version of their very blood itself!

[9:13:08 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Drones would breach defenses and deploy Zorian commandoes into the very ships themselves

[9:13:24 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Crew turned against crew

[9:13:50 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: the rapidly spreading gasses of undeath turned even the least among ships crews into fast, frightening monsters

[9:15:14 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The Commander despaired, watching fleets uncountable turn against each other, and fail.

[9:16:03 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: and then a world few knew of, and fewer had been to, which was home to a race nobody thought much of, sent an envoy to the Commander's flagship.

[9:16:50 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: "We have fought the Zorians before, Commander, and we have brought with us our weapon." The humans said.

[9:19:02 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: "On Terra Major, in our history, we found them hiding amongst us, waging a war of control over our people. It was the Sun Laser that saw our victory, for natural light is their bane, and in our ingenuity we captured it, tamed it, and turned against them in the dead of night."

[9:20:08 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The Commander welcomed this new race into the Federation Navy, and saw them prove themselves time and time again.

[9:20:24 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Slowly but surely, the tide turned, and victory seemed assured

[9:21:07 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: Using the Terran Sun Lasers, the ships were safe from Zorian contamination, and the fleets could hold against them once more

[9:21:13 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: the Zorian fleets were broken

[9:21:38 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: the allies of the commander and the federation cried out "We have won! Let us return home and put a stop to this endless war."

[9:22:21 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: but the Humans cautioned the commander. "We fought the Zorians before on our world, several times. If we do not purge this threat from the universe, we will fight them again."

[9:23:48 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: The commander saw the young and physically weak race in a new light, for while they were kind and open with him, they had shown a darker streak. They knew the vice of genocide well, and here they counseled it. The Commander saw that their advice was, however, correct. The remaining fleets that he could muster pursued their crusade until no Zorian could be found in the entire universe, as far as anyone could tell.

[9:24:00 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: And so ended the Second Zorian war, and so began the rule of the Federation

[9:25:00 AM] Gideon Keith-Stanley: For the races who owed their safety to the deeds of the Federation later faced their most cunning weapon, the charms of the Commander himself, who showed the death toll the Zorian war had caused, and brought the whole of the universe under the careful watch of the Federation of Galaxies