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plot for a plugin (long)
The main plot for a tc I've been working on. Feedback would be good to get. First draft, not finished, subject to change, incomplete, etc. Starseed Master Narrative
As the first few centuries of the second millennium drew to a close, humanity had stepped out of the cradle of Earth and colonized the solar system. Mars was terraformed, self-contained living habitats were scattered across moons and planets, and the resources of the solar system were slowly extracted and reshaped. As technology improved, the population boomed, and humanity expanded to fill even the less hospitable environments. Eyes turned to the stars, and astronomers identified several extra-solar planets that would be ideal for colonization. Technology, however, lagged behind the dreams of men. No means of faster than light travel had been discovered, nor was there any reliable method of putting colonists in stasis for the long voyage across the vastness of space. A massive generational star ship was chosen as the best method to colonize other stars. Humanity came together and built the huge Odyssey spacecraft, and the great great grandparents of the future colonists got on board and began the long voyage. Decades passed, and the Odyssey communicated with the home system over a growing distance and delay. The delay grew to years between transmission and reception, and the messages from the Odyssey grew less frequent and more strange. Transmissions from Odyssey continued to make less and less sense to those listening from Sol, and then they stopped altogether. All the data was exampined, and the only conclusion seemed to be that society had broken down and the ship, isolated from the rest of humanity, had destroyed itself. The first mission to the stars had failed. Shaken from the tragedy of the Odyssey , a radical new approach was conceived, the Seedship. Instead of generations of humans, a ship need only have the frozen genetic material necessary to create humans once it reached its destination. Technologically, this idea was perfectly feasible. The sticking point was that the created humans would have no adults to raise them, and would be dependent on the automated systems of the ship. This idea led debate into an entirely new area. Since no parents would be around the created children colonists, they, and the society they would found, would be a total tabla rasa. Whoever designed the seedship would have complete control over what type of culture to produce. Since the beginning of civilization, philosophers and polticians had debated the form of the perfect society. Now, the seedship would provide an opportunity to create one, without interference from currently existing cultures. A rush ensued, as each faction of humanity tried to send a ship bearing their ideal order to a habitable planet orbiting a foreign star before one of their rivals. Many years passed, and many seedships were launched into the void. Many had been designed to more or less duplicate the free, democratic cultures that most of humanity lived under. Others were the results of efforts of groups of varying radical ideologies. One notable seedship produced during this time was the Gaia. This ship was the largest ever built, and was a multiple colony mission. Gaia was aimed at a group of stars that included several likely planets for colonization. Once it achieved its full acceleration, the Gaia would split up and send out sub ships to each of these systems. Gaia produced a heated controversy after the decision was made to include only female colonists. The production of artificial sperm from female stem cells had made men, strictly speaking, unnecessary for reproduction, and it was thought that an all female society would be more stable. Critics responded that artificial wombs and eggs had made women just as obsolete as men, and challenged the studies suggesting greater stability, but the Gaia project had solid funding and support from several powerful feminist organizations, and went on to launch despite the protests. After long years of almost unbearable suspense, the first seedships reached their destinations, and began to send messages about their status to those who had launched them so many years ago. The results were varied. Some of the new pockets of humanity thrived, some self-destructed like the tragic Odyssey. All this time, scientists had been diligently chipping away at the FTL problem, until a new discovery suddenly changed everything. Well, maybe not everything, but a lot. An area of space-time very different than our normal universe had been discovered. This was dubbed ‘hyperspace,’ and a way to utilize it for interstellar travel was soon developed. Called the ‘Skim Drive,’ the new device allowed a ship to partially enter hyperspace, reducing its mass in normal space. This allowed for greatly increased acceleration and speed, and compensated for the increase in mass at relativistic velocities. While not faster than light, the skim drive made ships able to much more closely approach it. Skim drives opened up the possibility of sending seedships to much more distant stars, and a new wave of colony ships were launched. Also around this time the older colonies began to achieve levels of sophistication which allowed them to produce their own interstellar colony ships, equipped with skim drives once the design specs transmitted from Sol were received. Humanity had spread to the stars, but without efficient means of communication and travel over the vast interstellar distances each colony world was largely a being unto itself. Then, the unexpected happened. All at once, in several systems, ships of alien design appeared seemingly out of nowhere and approached the humans living there. The aliens called themselves the Khyim, and had apparently been observing humanity for some time, at least long enough to learn their language by listening to broadcasts. The Khyim told a strange story and offered humanity a deal. The Khyim’s home world was very far away in the direction of the galactic core, or ‘galactic north.’ They had achieved space flight some time ago and had explored the area of galaxy near their world and had created a prosperous network of colonies. They had never encountered any other intelligent species, until advanced alien ships entered their space without warning from the direction of the galactic core and began to lay waste to the ships and planets of the Khyim. The invaders made no attempts at communication, and responded to all Khyim attempts with assault. Though quite advanced by human standards, the Khyim were unable to do anything but slow the invaders, who they named simply “The Desolation” because of their practice of strip-mining and then burning captured Khyim worlds. It seemed clear that the Khyim would be wiped out soon, unless drastic action was taken. Though the Desolation was more advanced in most ways, the Khyim had a better understanding of hyperspace physics. A theoretical proposal had the possibility of saving the Khyim race. Their scientists franticly constructed a giant hyperspace device in their home system, while they evacuated as many of their colonists as they could. With the Desolation literally at their doorstep, the Khyim finished construction of the device and activated it. It was basically a giant version of the Khyim FTL hyper jump drive, but produced enough power to open a ‘gate’ through hyperspace allowing nearly instant travel to a very distant point. The destination was effectively random, but the Khyim reasoned that anywhere far away from the Desolation was better than annihilation. Their massive fleet, containing almost all surviving members of their race, went through the gate, and a heroic rear guard group destroyed it behind them. The other end of the Khyim rabbit hole turned out to be near human space and after some exploration they encountered ancient human electromagnetic broadcasts and made their way to the source of these transmissions. After a time spent evaluating the new species, they initiated contact and proposed a deal. They would give humanity the secrets of their advanced technology, including their hyperspace FTL drives, and humanity would in return allow them to settle worlds to the galactic west of human space, provide them with some of the resources they needed to reestablish themselves, and, if the Desolation ever came again, humanity and the Khyim would stand and fight them together. For humanity, this was an offer they couldn’t refuse - the FTL drive alone was more than enough to composite for what the Khyim were asking, and if the Desolation was half as genocidal as the Khyim claimed, humanity was in just as much danger as the Khyim. For their part, the Khyim believed that the Desolation might be able to discover where the Khyim had run to by examining the hyperspace disturbances their gate had created. They reasoned that even if humanity proved unreliable after being given Khyim technology, a more advanced humanity would be capable of inflicting more damage on the Desolation, which might at least buy the Khyim time to escape again. The Khyim think differently than humans. Khyim society is much more harmonious than that of humans, they settle disagreements by debating until everyone agrees. They assumed that the various human colony worlds would respond to the introduction FTL travel as Khyim would; establish a central forum which would coordinate the integration of the far flung colonies into a unified humanity. Because of this misunderstanding of human nature, they transmitted information on their hyper jump drives to every single human colony they found. The results shocked the aliens; the newly connected systems were almost instantly at each other’s throats. Wildly different cultures produced by the ideological programming of seedships, compounded with centuries of isolation had not equipped them to deal with people so different from themselves. Arguments sprung up over the rights to newly accessible resources, trade arrangements, and doctrinal differences. Soon, these disagreements escalated to a number of chaotic battles now known as the Contact Wars. Out of this strife, two major islands of stability emerged. The first was centered on the Sol system. Most of the colonies near Earth were settled by relatively moderate ideologies, and many of these had maintained contact with each other and the home world. The Sol government itself was a stabilizing factor, as they had a much greater economic and military capacity than the colonies, and used this power to maintain peace in the systems near Earth. Soon, an alliance grew between Sol and the inner colonies, the beginning of what would later become the DRE (Democratic Republic of Earth). The other area of stability was the group of colonies established by the mothership Gaia. Since they were all settled by the same ship, there were few cultural differences. And, because the Gaia colonies were clustered close to one another they had been in frequent communication with each other. Women were elected as delegates for an assembly on the planet Gaia which drafted the constitution for the newly established group of all female worlds, which was dubbed the Gynarchy. These two stable groups found themselves with common interests; defending themselves against the more aggressive colonies, stopping the wars between the colonies, establishing a unified front for dealing with the Khyim, and coordinating a defense of human space against the possible coming of the Desolation or other unknown threats. So, representatives from each government met on Ceres in the Sol system and signed a pact of formal Alliance, called the Haupt-Rothman treaty after the two most senior diplomats from each side. The organization created is officially “The Human Alliance of Free Stars,” but is usually just called The Alliance, and is now the dominant power in human affairs. The newly formed Alliance met with representatives from the Khyim, who had withdrawn from human space when the Contact Wars had begun. They explained what had happened to the confused aliens, and offered a treaty of formal agreement to the Khyim's initial offer as the representatives of the largest bloc of humanity. The signing of this treaty, the Spica Pact, took place on a specially constructed station in the Spica system, on the boarder between human and Khyim space, and directly in the path that the Desolation would have to take if they came from the direction of the old Khyim worlds. Thus the Khyim and the Alliance are sometimes referred to as the “Spica Pact” when acting together. To the south of Sol, the region around the constellation Pyxis was home to a number of colonies established by the second wave of seedships using skim drives. Many of these colonies were sent out by fringe groups, and their social structures are more radical than earlier colonies. The Contact Wars were particularly fierce in the Pyxis, because of the participants’ diverse beliefs, the relative proximity of the Pyxis worlds to each other, and heavy competition for scarce resources. Well after the Alliance had stabilized the galactic north, the Pyxis was still in a state of almost constant conflict. The Pyxis had attained a sort of balance of power as a result of the different principalities (as the Pyxis colonies came to be known) uniting against any one principality that grew too powerful. This all ended after a previously little known group from further south called the Ascendancy launched a massive all out invasion of Pyxis space, begining what came to be known as the Australis War. Though the Pyxis colonies all had respectable military might, the Ascendancy was able to exploit their division and eliminate the principalities one by one. Threatened with destruction, the remaining Pyxis colonies hastily formed a Pyxis Confederation to battle the invaders. The Confederation’s first official act was to request military aid and membership in the Alliance. The Alliance had been monitoring the Australis conflict with growing alarm and were only too happy to help defeat the violent, xenophobic Ascendancy and soon the Alliance had a third member. The combined might of the Pyxis was formidable, especially with assistance from the Alliance, and the new Confederation beat the Ascendancy back in a series of bloody battles. The Ascendants were finally evicted from Pyxis territory and a cease fire was agreed to by the two weary govenments. After the victory, old rivalries began to strain the fabric of the Confederation, but so far it has managed to stay intact. As the Australis war come to a close, Khyim and Alliance long range scouting missions far to the north reported sightings of ships matching the Khyim’s description of Desolation cruisers. Frantic activity followed, as fortifications were erected and fleets and armies were mobilized. The strategy worked out by the Khyim and human military commanders was to hold a number of sytems that the Desolation would have to move through to reach inhabited systems. This was called the Ma’ii Line, after the Khyim admiral who proposed it. The idea was to keep the Desolation from employing their scorched earth tactics, witch would cripple the military infrastructure of Spica Pact, as had happened to the Khyim during their first encounter with the Desolation. Just as predicted, the Desolation ships come through the Spica system, where the combined fleets of the Khyim and the Alliance were waiting. Just as the Khyim had said, they made no attempts at communication, ignored all hails from Spica Pact forces, and attacked without hesitation. Fierce combat ensued, the now famous Battle of Spica. Though tested to their limits, the combined fleets of humanity and the Khyim were victorious. A great celebration across most of known space followed; the fearful Desolation so long dreaded had come, and had been defeated. The Khyim’s reaction was much more subdued. The Desolation fleet had consisted of only 13 cruisers, and had nearly destroyed the most advanced force that both races were capable of fielding even when outnumbered nearly 5 to 1. When the Khyim told their allies that the Desolation fleet sent to take the Khyim home system Quon had numbered in the thousands, and that the cruisers seen at Spica were one of the Desolation’s lightest capital ships, Fleet Control’s celebration quickly died.
Stunned silence
This...is...AWESOME!
Very well-written, sir. If this gets made into a TC, SIGN ME UP!
@ashtar-, on Apr 25 2007, 12:34 PM, said in Starseed master narrative:
As the first few centuries of the second millennium drew to a close, humanity had stepped out of the cradle of Earth and colonized the solar system. Mars was terraformed, self-contained living habitats were scattered across moons and planets, and the resources of the solar system were slowly extracted and reshaped. As technology improved, the population boomed, and humanity expanded to fill even the less hospitable environments. Eyes turned to the stars, and astronomers identified several extra-solar planets that would be ideal for colonization. Technology, however, lagged behind the dreams of men. No means of faster than light travel had been discovered, nor was there any reliable method of putting colonists in stasis for the long voyage across the vastness of space. A massive generational star ship was chosen as the best method to colonize other stars. Humanity came together and built the huge Odyssey spacecraft, and the great great grandparents of the future colonists got on board and began the long voyage. Decades passed, and the Odyssey communicated with the home system over a growing distance and delay. The delay grew to years between transmission and reception, and the messages from the Odyssey grew less frequent and more strange. Transmissions from Odyssey continued to make less and less sense to those listening from Sol, and then they stopped altogether. All the data was exampined, and the only conclusion seemed to be that society had broken down and the ship, isolated from the rest of humanity, had destroyed itself. The first mission to the stars had failed.
Shaken from the tragedy of the Odyssey , a radical new approach was conceived, the Seedship. Instead of generations of humans, a ship need only have the frozen genetic material necessary to create humans once it reached its destination. Technologically, this idea was perfectly feasible. The sticking point was that the created humans would have no adults to raise them, and would be dependent on the automated systems of the ship. This idea led debate into an entirely new area. Since no parents would be around the created children colonists, they, and the society they would found, would be a total tabla rasa. Whoever designed the seedship would have complete control over what type of culture to produce. Since the beginning of civilization, philosophers and polticians had debated the form of the perfect society. Now, the seedship would provide an opportunity to create one, without interference from currently existing cultures.
A rush ensued, as each faction of humanity tried to send a ship bearing their ideal order to a habitable planet orbiting a foreign star before one of their rivals.
Many years passed, and many seedships were launched into the void. Many had been designed to more or less duplicate the free, democratic cultures that most of humanity lived under. Others were the results of efforts of groups of varying radical ideologies.
One notable seedship produced during this time was the Gaia. This ship was the largest ever built, and was a multiple colony mission. Gaia was aimed at a group of stars that included several likely planets for colonization. Once it achieved its full acceleration, the Gaia would split up and send out sub ships to each of these systems. Gaia produced a heated controversy after the decision was made to include only female colonists. The production of artificial sperm from female stem cells had made men, strictly speaking, unnecessary for reproduction, and it was thought that an all female society would be more stable. Critics responded that artificial wombs and eggs had made women just as obsolete as men, and challenged the studies suggesting greater stability, but the Gaia project had solid funding and support from several powerful feminist organizations, and went on to launch despite the protests.
After long years of almost unbearable suspense, the first seedships reached their destinations, and began to send messages about their status to those who had launched them so many years ago. The results were varied. Some of the new pockets of humanity thrived, some self-destructed like the tragic Odyssey.
All this time, scientists had been diligently chipping away at the FTL problem, until a new discovery suddenly changed everything. Well, maybe not everything, but a lot. An area of space-time very different than our normal universe had been discovered. This was dubbed 'hyperspace,' and a way to utilize it for interstellar travel was soon developed. Called the 'Skim Drive,' the new device allowed a ship to partially enter hyperspace, reducing its mass in normal space. This allowed for greatly increased acceleration and speed, and compensated for the increase in mass at relativistic velocities. While not faster than light, the skim drive made ships able to much more closely approach it.
Skim drives opened up the possibility of sending seedships to much more distant stars, and a new wave of colony ships were launched. Also around this time the older colonies began to achieve levels of sophistication which allowed them to produce their own interstellar colony ships, equipped with skim drives once the design specs transmitted from Sol were received.
Humanity had spread to the stars, but without efficient means of communication and travel over the vast interstellar distances each colony world was largely a being unto itself. Then, the unexpected happened. All at once, in several systems, ships of alien design appeared seemingly out of nowhere and approached the humans living there. The aliens called themselves the Khyim, and had apparently been observing humanity for some time, at least long enough to learn their language by listening to broadcasts. The Khyim told a strange story and offered humanity a deal. The Khyim's home world was very far away in the direction of the galactic core, or 'galactic north.' They had achieved space flight some time ago and had explored the area of galaxy near their world and had created a prosperous network of colonies. They had never encountered any other intelligent species, until advanced alien ships entered their space without warning from the direction of the galactic core and began to lay waste to the ships and planets of the Khyim. The invaders made no attempts at communication, and responded to all Khyim attempts with assault. Though quite advanced by human standards, the Khyim were unable to do anything but slow the invaders, who they named simply "The Desolation" because of their practice of strip-mining and then burning captured Khyim worlds. It seemed clear that the Khyim would be wiped out soon, unless drastic action was taken. Though the Desolation was more advanced in most ways, the Khyim had a better understanding of hyperspace physics. A theoretical proposal had the possibility of saving the Khyim race. Their scientists franticly constructed a giant hyperspace device in their home system, while they evacuated as many of their colonists as they could. With the Desolation literally at their doorstep, the Khyim finished construction of the device and activated it. It was basically a giant version of the Khyim FTL hyper jump drive, but produced enough power to open a 'gate' through hyperspace allowing nearly instant travel to a very distant point. The destination was effectively random, but the Khyim reasoned that anywhere far away from the Desolation was better than annihilation. Their massive fleet, containing almost all surviving members of their race, went through the gate, and a heroic rear guard group destroyed it behind them.
The other end of the Khyim rabbit hole turned out to be near human space and after some exploration they encountered ancient human electromagnetic broadcasts and made their way to the source of these transmissions. After a time spent evaluating the new species, they initiated contact and proposed a deal. They would give humanity the secrets of their advanced technology, including their hyperspace FTL drives, and humanity would in return allow them to settle worlds to the galactic west of human space, provide them with some of the resources they needed to reestablish themselves, and, if the Desolation ever came again, humanity and the Khyim would stand and fight them together. For humanity, this was an offer they couldn't refuse - the FTL drive alone was more than enough to composite for what the Khyim were asking, and if the Desolation was half as genocidal as the Khyim claimed, humanity was in just as much danger as the Khyim. For their part, the Khyim believed that the Desolation might be able to discover where the Khyim had run to by examining the hyperspace disturbances their gate had created. They reasoned that even if humanity proved unreliable after being given Khyim technology, a more advanced humanity would be capable of inflicting more damage on the Desolation, which might at least buy the Khyim time to escape again.
The Khyim think differently than humans. Khyim society is much more harmonious than that of humans, they settle disagreements by debating until everyone agrees. They assumed that the various human colony worlds would respond to the introduction FTL travel as Khyim would; establish a central forum which would coordinate the integration of the far flung colonies into a unified humanity. Because of this misunderstanding of human nature, they transmitted information on their hyper jump drives to every single human colony they found. The results shocked the aliens; the newly connected systems were almost instantly at each other's throats. Wildly different cultures produced by the ideological programming of seedships, compounded with centuries of isolation had not equipped them to deal with people so different from themselves. Arguments sprung up over the rights to newly accessible resources, trade arrangements, and doctrinal differences. Soon, these disagreements escalated to a number of chaotic battles now known as the Contact Wars.
Out of this strife, two major islands of stability emerged. The first was centered on the Sol system. Most of the colonies near Earth were settled by relatively moderate ideologies, and many of these had maintained contact with each other and the home world. The Sol government itself was a stabilizing factor, as they had a much greater economic and military capacity than the colonies, and used this power to maintain peace in the systems near Earth. Soon, an alliance grew between Sol and the inner colonies, the beginning of what would later become the DRE (Democratic Republic of Earth). The other area of stability was the group of colonies established by the mothership Gaia. Since they were all settled by the same ship, there were few cultural differences. And, because the Gaia colonies were clustered close to one another they had been in frequent communication with each other. Women were elected as delegates for an assembly on the planet Gaia which drafted the constitution for the newly established group of all female worlds, which was dubbed the Gynarchy. These two stable groups found themselves with common interests; defending themselves against the more aggressive colonies, stopping the wars between the colonies, establishing a unified front for dealing with the Khyim, and coordinating a defense of human space against the possible coming of the Desolation or other unknown threats. So, representatives from each government met on Ceres in the Sol system and signed a pact of formal Alliance, called the Haupt-Rothman treaty after the two most senior diplomats from each side. The organization created is officially "The Human Alliance of Free Stars," but is usually just called The Alliance, and is now the dominant power in human affairs. The newly formed Alliance met with representatives from the Khyim, who had withdrawn from human space when the Contact Wars had begun. They explained what had happened to the confused aliens, and offered a treaty of formal agreement to the Khyim's initial offer as the representatives of the largest bloc of humanity. The signing of this treaty, the Spica Pact, took place on a specially constructed station in the Spica system, on the boarder between human and Khyim space, and directly in the path that the Desolation would have to take if they came from the direction of the old Khyim worlds. Thus the Khyim and the Alliance are sometimes referred to as the "Spica Pact" when acting together.
To the south of Sol, the region around the constellation Pyxis was home to a number of colonies established by the second wave of seedships using skim drives. Many of these colonies were sent out by fringe groups, and their social structures are more radical than earlier colonies. The Contact Wars were particularly fierce in the Pyxis, because of the participants' diverse beliefs, the relative proximity of the Pyxis worlds to each other, and heavy competition for scarce resources. Well after the Alliance had stabilized the galactic north, the Pyxis was still in a state of almost constant conflict. The Pyxis had attained a sort of balance of power as a result of the different principalities (as the Pyxis colonies came to be known) uniting against any one principality that grew too powerful. This all ended after a previously little known group from further south called the Ascendancy launched a massive all out invasion of Pyxis space, begining what came to be known as the Australis War. Though the Pyxis colonies all had respectable military might, the Ascendancy was able to exploit their division and eliminate the principalities one by one. Threatened with destruction, the remaining Pyxis colonies hastily formed a Pyxis Confederation to battle the invaders. The Confederation's first official act was to request military aid and membership in the Alliance. The Alliance had been monitoring the Australis conflict with growing alarm and were only too happy to help defeat the violent, xenophobic Ascendancy and soon the Alliance had a third member. The combined might of the Pyxis was formidable, especially with assistance from the Alliance, and the new Confederation beat the Ascendancy back in a series of bloody battles. The Ascendants were finally evicted from Pyxis territory and a cease fire was agreed to by the two weary govenments. After the victory, old rivalries began to strain the fabric of the Confederation, but so far it has managed to stay intact.
As the Australis war come to a close, Khyim and Alliance long range scouting missions far to the north reported sightings of ships matching the Khyim's description of Desolation cruisers. Frantic activity followed, as fortifications were erected and fleets and armies were mobilized. The strategy worked out by the Khyim and human military commanders was to hold a number of sytems that the Desolation would have to move through to reach inhabited systems. This was called the Ma'ii Line, after the Khyim admiral who proposed it. The idea was to keep the Desolation from employing their scorched earth tactics, witch would cripple the military infrastructure of Spica Pact, as had happened to the Khyim during their first encounter with the Desolation. Just as predicted, the Desolation ships come through the Spica system, where the combined fleets of the Khyim and the Alliance were waiting. Just as the Khyim had said, they made no attempts at communication, ignored all hails from Spica Pact forces, and attacked without hesitation. Fierce combat ensued, the now famous Battle of Spica. Though tested to their limits, the combined fleets of humanity and the Khyim were victorious. A great celebration across most of known space followed; the fearful Desolation so long dreaded had come, and had been defeated. The Khyim's reaction was much more subdued. The Desolation fleet had consisted of only 13 cruisers, and had nearly destroyed the most advanced force that both races were capable of fielding even when outnumbered nearly 5 to 1. When the Khyim told their allies that the Desolation fleet sent to take the Khyim home system Quon had numbered in the thousands, and that the cruisers seen at Spica were one of the Desolation's lightest capital ships, Fleet Control's celebration quickly died.
Quoted and reformatted. Blocks like that hurt my head.
This post has been edited by Aelran : 24 April 2007 - 09:09 PM
It's... It's... Marvelous! I seriously hope you can find the time and resources to pull this off a TC based on this story! It has some spelling issues, I'll point them out as soon as I've had some sleep.
Okay. I've now read it.
Firstly, I'm very impressed by this. However, there are a few elements I'm a little questioning of.
Timescales. FTL transport is a necessity for these, and your handling of it is fairly standard. That's fine. But what is the distance travelled by the Odyssey? What was its speed? How does culture change over the course of this?
I question your use of the word "feminist". The situation you suggest is radical, and this may not be the best label. Female-supremacy groups seems to be what you're trying to refer to – would misandry be better here?
The Khyim. They seem too flawless. I think that there's a reason that science-fiction cultures are often similar to humans – and whilst a culture built around universal agreement is nice and all, the effort in writing them convincingly could be significant. This is just a word of warning from my own experience.
Governmental structure. Do you know roughly how your stellar civilisations are run? Initially, I was thinking laissez-faire capitalism was in place, but I don't think that that is likely later.
A thought in regards to culture – language. How fast has it developed? If this element of verisimilitude is important to you, try taking a look at creoles. Think about the effects of new governmental structures, native vegetation, and the like.
Wow!!! If you continue work on this TC and make progress on it, it will be a great addition to EVN. :wub:
Not a bad manipulation of many sci-fi cliches, particularly EVN TC story proposals, with an added touch of originality on a couple places as far as I can see. Though my biggest point to make: a good story doesn't make a good TC by itself. Hopefully you got a plan of how you're going to do this to make it fun. Because if the only reason you're doing the TC because you have an awsome story idea, you're better off dropping the notion of making a huge plug and write a book. The only thing a book needs is a good story, which is what you appear to already have, whereas a TC needs to have good gameplay, satisfactory graphics, satisfactory sounds, interesting missions, difficulty that isn't too easy or too hard, etc.
If you know how you're going to do this, go ahead and follow through on this project. Otherwise, I recommend making this into a book or novel.
Quote
Otherwise, I recommend making this into a book or novel.
One that I would read. So rarely is such a good idea fielded. I love it.
yay feedback.
Thanks for taking the time to read all that.
Warlord Mike, JacaByte, Crow, zapp: Wow, thanks, you make me feel all warm a fuzzy inside. And of course a constant stream of compliments makes me write more. Sory about the spelling, sometimes I just totally forget how to spell even simple words. It's annoying to have to look up something as easy as "belief." Any grammar or spelling checking would be welcomed.
Aelran: Formatting is appreciated. I've never been one for short paragraphs (see below). You've also nailed some of the biggest problems with the story:
Time scales: I'm no physicist, but I've been doing a lot of reading lately and I think I've finally got a handle on the distances and times involved. Odyssey, and most of the first wave seedships, used Orion nuclear pulse drives (which will possibly be available to as an outfit for the player) and could go about 5% of the speed of light. I'm going to say that Odyssey's destination was the nearest star, Proxima Centauri, which is about 4.2 light years away. Thus it would have taken 84 years at full speed for Odyssey to reach its target, plus possibly quite a few more years to accelerate and decelerate. If propulsion technology increased for the later seedships to about 20% or so of the speed of light, there are a number of stars that are close enough to reach in a few hundred years. Of course, the frequency of habitable worlds is currently unknown so we don't know how many of these stars would be good candidates for seedships. With the skim drives, ships could go around 50-90% of the speed of light, and a large number of stars could have been reached in a reasonable amount of time.
Very tentatively, the timeline goes something like
AD 2100 Mars, Moon Colonies AD 2300 Lots of solar system colonies, Odyssey launched AD 2375 Odyssey is lost AD 2400 First wave of seedships AD 2500 Gaia launched AD 2800 Skim drive invented, second wave of seedships AD 3200 First Contact with Khyim, Contact Wars (Dates now in PC (post contact)) PC 0050 DRE, Gynarchy stabilized PC 0075 Alliance founded PC 0100 Ascendancy invades Pyxis colonies, Australis War PC 0130 Pyxis Confederation forms, joins alliance PC 0145 Kether falls to the Pyxis, Ascendancy defeated PC 0198 Battle of Spica PC 0200 Plugin starts
You are correct that most modern feminists probably would not support a man-less society. The Gynarchs are not supposed to be particularly anti-male, they just think that there are less societal tensions when everyone is the same sex. They have little desire to force other cultures to follow their way of life. If there is a message I'm trying to communicate with the Gynarchy (other than 'space amazons are awesome') it is that, aside from the lack of Y chromosomes, they are pretty much the same as everyone else, for both good and bad. Their guns are even phallus shaped.
You're right, the Khyim shouldn't be perfect alien angels. I have yet to fully flesh them out, but here are a few thoughts. While they are not evil per se, they are startlingly alien in some ways. For instance, they eat their dead. Since they value harmony and consensus so much, they can be surprisingly ruthless and brutal in suppressing individuals they view as disruptive. There is also the question of whether of not they are as benevolent and innocent as they claim. How does humanity know they didn't start the war with the Desolation? We might have sided with the wrong aliens.
I have a file a little longer than the narrative that details the various governments. It needs a little clean up, as parts of it are no longer accurate. I'll post that sometime soon. I'm not sure how to work the languages, though I was planning to base the Khyim's laguage on Navajo (which I don't speak). It looks and sounds quite alien to english speakers. A few random words: Tsי ninיhבlייh, Naayיי' neizghבnם, Asdzבב nבdleehי.
Josh: You are correct, translating all this into an actual plugin will be the hard part. I do have a small but significant part of the plugin itself done already, the writing of this narrative was to get my thoughts together and to establish a concrete history.
Yes, there are quite a lot of ideas in the story borrowed, consciously or unconsciously, from many different sources. Despite what my sig says, I will at some point provide a list of all the major ones. I might also suggest that similarities to the plots of the main EV games and various tc proposals is at least partially the result of the requirements of the game’s structure and engine. One needs a universe with many inhabited systems, some sort of conflict, lots of spaceships fighting each other, star travel that works by jumps, etc.
This post has been edited by ashtar. : 25 April 2007 - 09:47 PM
Just to throw in my two (euro)cents: Josh is one of the many EVN players who prefer gameplay to story (no offence meant Josh, we both know it's true). This means that if you get such a TC finished, they will not care so much about what goes on "planetside", and will find a storyline boring if there aren't battles every two missions. Sure, I sound very bitter, but that way, if you pull this off, you won't be.
Now, the suggestion of making it into a novel is a good one. In my opinion, it might indeed be good to write not only the missions, but what happens in between, so that you have your plug and your novel at the same time (because you don't describe in Nova a battle the player fights… you describe it in the novel, not in the plug).
But I'm a big sceptic when it comes to TCs, so I'll just say "good luck". You'll need time, perseverance, perseverance, luck, time and perseverance.
@ashtar-, on Apr 26 2007, 02:36 PM, said in Starseed master narrative:
Okay. Proxima is an interesting target, and keeps the numbers low. I'd probably multiply the time taken by about 1.5 due to acceleration restrictions, myself.
I like the timeframes. It's very broad, which is a good thing, due to allowing extension of the underlying game history. This does raise a few social problems, but I think that the wars involved will answer much of this.
Damn architects... I love the name – I think it carries a lot with it, and your intent with them could create some truly fascinating situations.
Done right, this looks good. I was getting an impression of a very slow society, and it was that I was responding to. From this, I think my impression was incorrect, and that's wonderful. Alien mindsets are best when used subtly, I find, although a major difference can make subtle ones far more chilling.
I'm looking forward to it. With regard to the languages, my problem is more the divergence that can occur. Ansible-type technology is a common solution to this, but I'm a little wary of it. Warfare is also a potential solution, as it all too often is.
Cheers, and good luck!
@pace, on Apr 26 2007, 05:29 PM, said in Starseed master narrative:
Hmm. I don't know about that. Again, there's a big difference between a novella (which is probably a better description) and an interactive story, both in style and in structure. A real strength of this concept is, I think, the open-ended nature – closer to EV or EVO than EVN.
This is completely true.
I have my own views on the gameplay/story divide, but I don't think that this is the best time or place to bring them up.
For instance, they eat their dead.
Hardcore, man. Hey, can you make a small yet technologically-advanced 'faction' name the Zappian Empire, which gets by on stealth and guile to achieve its machanatious ( spell check had a field day on this one) ways?
"Machinations" is the word you were looking for, Zapp.
I know, I just changed it to make it make sense. "Machinations ways" doesn't make much sense.
@pace, on Apr 26 2007, 12:29 AM, said in Starseed master narrative:
Just to throw in my two (euro)cents: Josh is one of the many EVN players who prefer gameplay to story (no offence meant Josh, we both know it's true). This means that if you get such a TC finished, they will not care so much about what goes on "planetside", and will find a storyline boring if there aren't battles every two missions.
Thats an exaggeration. I quite enjoyed Nova's storyline and thought they fit in very well. I simply felt that the Regular and Shadow Warrior storylines in ARPIA2 weren't so gameplay friendly as they could have been. I also hate to say it, but the comment is a bit on the ignorant side as well. Not in the insulting sense. I've written twenty or so short stories, am taking a Creative Writing Workshop course this (nearly over) semester, and have very recently started on my own novel. If anything, I love a good story, but I don't feel it should try to override gameplay in a game.
I'm thinking that the Odyssey's destination should be Gliese 581 C. It's relatively close at about 20.4 LY and it holds the greatest prospect for being able to support life as we know it.
Diggit.
Love the story. Very creative, a lot to it (which makes it a bit long, but that's okay), and you certainly seem to have a good idea of what you're making here. If and when you make this into a TC, I'm really looking forward to trying this out. But it'll probably take you at least 3 years to make.
@pace, on Apr 26 2007, 06:29 AM, said in Starseed master narrative:
Story-heavy plug-ins/scenarios are a very nasty double-edged sword, in my experience. It can go wrong in (at least) two ways:
Firstly, let's say the story is really good, and the player likes it - is enthralled by it, even. But then they hit a really tough mission that they find really hard to beat. All of a sudden they find that they aren't even interested in the mission for itself as a challenge - they just want to get past it to get the next nugget of the story! The game itself has just become a chore to be endured so the player can reach the next text box.
Secondly, let's say the story is not so good - or maybe some would consider it good, but this player at least doesn't like it. In order to avoid the first problem above, the designer has made the missions fairly easy, trivial even. So the player rattles through trivial missions in order to read more plot which he doesn't buy into at all. Then he gets to the end of the whole thing and asks: what kind of major plotline was this? There were no gameplay challenges, and the plot was just trite nonsense!
I think that EV mission strings need to be structured something more like action films. Now, action films can have a strong plot - although they don't have to. Whether they do or not, that plot has to be regularly punctuated by action scenes. This needn't be seen as a limit on creativity, but a stimulus to it: work created without any structure tends to develop a flabby nature, and restricting it to an arbitrary structure (any arbitrary structure) will tend to make it more focused. Think of haikus, for example: having to express your thoughts in just three lines of defined length forces you to come up with the most succinct way of putting them you can.
Now, if the plot you have in mind doesn't allow for a mission of more gameplay significance at fairly regular intervals, you might be well advised to pick another form for that story: just as a man who wants to tell a story ranging across five continents and 200 years with a cast of thousands would be unwise to write it as a haiku!
Which isn't to say you can't stretch the boundaries of the genre. A film that springs to mind is Aliens (Alien would be an even better example, but it is less definitively as action film). Once it gets where it's going, it's a relatively conventional action film, but it makes its audience wait for it, spending an hour or more establishing the situation and characters and building the foreboding before the blood and guts start to fly. A confident scenario designer could take a similar route: but would have to be certain that the substance they had waiting was enough to justify that build-up.
But let's get back on topic! This is a very interesting and well-thought through back-plot. The only thing I would suggest regarding that itself is to do with the timeline: in the Post Contact period, in particular, it could be more compact. Why 50 years before the Contact Wars even begin to subside? Does the Ascendancy War really need to last 45 years? We only need to look at the 20th century (or any century of human history for that matter) to see that incredible events and changes can happen within a very short timespan. Empires rose and fell. One of the biggest issues by the end of the century (Israel) was, literally, not even on the map at the beginning. One of the most militaristic countries at the beginning of the century (Germany) was one of the most peaceful by the end (and got split into two and later reunified along the way).
Why does it matter? Well, perhaps technological advances will mean that your cast of characters will have lived for centuries anyway, but assuming that they haven't, a narrower timespan ensures that those characters have lived this history. Let's say that Contact was just 50 years ago instead of 200. Even with modern lifespans, that would mean that a huge chunk of society still remembers what pre-FTL life was like. The very individuals who first made contact with the Khyim might still be alive. The various conflicts will have been the formative experiences of the characters involved in the story.
Moving on to more EV-specific things, the next challenge for you is to analyse overall gameplay issues. What will make flying and fighting in one area of the galaxy different from another? There are many tools to use (interference, asteroids, murk, different mixes of ships, different levels of hostility), it's just a question of deciding how to use them to fix different 'moods' for different areas. Also, technology: what different technologies (outfits, ships, weapons) will the different governments and species have to offer? This is as much a stylistic issue as one of game balance or variety: their ships and technology are the primary way in which the player will experience that culture, so it needs to be appropriately distinctive and representative. At the same time, it's rarely wise to make one group 'just better'.
That's all I have for now: good luck with your idea!
Heh, the creator of EVO managed to express my opinion on the whole in much better words. I'll need to copy that so I can quote it if the need every arises.