ADDITIONAL INFO From The Mouth of Damnation: Lore Thread

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A HISTORY OF THE SETTING
Current Year: 4237

Reckoning Of Empires: 4229 - 4233


In the late 3990’s, the majority of the known populated universe was at a standstill. The tenuous alliance between old Earth nation-states had become dangerously strained by their growing distance both literal and proverbial to their homeworld. Old rivalries between the global South and North accelerated the growing strain which coincided with the beginning of unrest on the Martian colonies established decades prior. In turn this accelerates research into experimental Faster Than Light or FTL travel for its then-advanced spacefleet. This becomes humanity’s first contact with ethereal powers of the Oneiric Chasm in the process and is the starting point for all future manifestations of etherealist capability in the species.

The dissolution of the Central Earth Government begins with the human colonization fleets splitting up and voyaging past the Solar System’s boundaries. As they scatter across the stars, they will become independent political entities but their true significance is yet to manifest until they establish proper extraterrestrial contact.

Meanwhile other organizations are not faring much better. The scileto-populated Firmalazia Izradia (alternatively Radiant Firmament), one of the two current great Empires, is caught in a deadlock with the even older Yrrkradian Dominion (or Empire instead of Dominion). Both stretched back for centuries, predating humanity’s greatest achievements and have been in varying states of conflict with one another worsening with each passing generation.

Between them stood the semi-nomadic Black City Conglomerate or Carnazir, situated in the borders between them as well as the mostly uncolonized spaces of the galactic south. Comprising large floating city-stations and synthetic worlds, it primarily brokered an uneasy truce between the two both. This protected its own holdings and allowed them to benefit from serving as a trade intermediary. Its titular “Black Cities” often served as neutral states with technology from both of the two alien imperiums integrated into their architecture.

Both the Firmament and the Dominion were strained by a variety of factors. The growing dissatisfaction shared by their lower to middle classes, nurtured by the anarchic and rebellious strains of Carnazir black cities, were reaching a boiling point. As geopolitical tensions rose and even the Conglomerate started to draw negative attention, the dissatisfied masses across three great powers began to ideologically converge on many shared points of interest and unrest. The threat of a revolt became very real.

Many revolts had mutated into revolutions with the most prominent resulting in various black cities being overrun by their populace and escaping to boundary worlds. Situated between the two imperiums, they would pour oil on the fires of civil war and growing insurgencies. As unrest spread between both warring empires, the Conglomerate was initially sanctioned and opposed as having been a potential initiator of this state of conflict (even if it had affected them as well). Alleviating policy in the form of attempted political and economic liberalization reforms were attempted but the logistical knowhow and practical experience needed for their implementation was already a rare commodity.

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In the 4000’s, various human splinter-governments became aware of the presence of extraterrestrial life. The majority of them were smaller colonies or at best regional powers in distant systems, but they began to trade with those escaping the political situation across the three Empires. Although many of them saw themselves as long since separated from Earth, the largest of the human colonial alliances still recall their terran origins. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization or NATO, now an even more heavily corporatised entity, was keeping an eye on the distant rumblings of alien empires. They were by no means a veritable threat to them, primarily seen as curious if insignificant backwaters insignificant before the burgeoning civil unrest. This would go on to be an oversight with massive ramifications for the galactic power balance.

In 4100, an alliance of independent human colonies backed by old earth capital and technocratic bureaucracy known as the Dolsilvec Foundation arose as a counter to NATO’s renewed push for power among the scattered human colonies. While both organizations functionally had the same economic and political base, their rivalry with one another frequently saw them taking opposing sides. As this was happening, the revolts going on between the three alien empires had erupted into multiple border skirmishes and civil wars. This occasionally forced all three to cooperate yet also forced their reforms to slow to a crawl or outright stop for decades.

NATO and the Dolsilvec Foundation made their move the same year. The former had been establishing relations with the Black City Conglomerate and the Radiant Firmament but in the process locked them out of talks through a mixture of sanctions and manufactured interstellar incidents. Yet to spite them, the Dolsilvec Foundation renewed its efforts and became an increasingly prominent political and economic partner to the Yrrkradian Empire. As talks between both humans and aliens ramped up alongside a renewed inter-human cold war, battle lines were drawn as well as once more, a temporary alliance formed in 4150.

It was no secret at this point that in spite of their massive size and power, both Yrrkradia and the Firmament are shaky and to some even crumbling empires. The Conglomerate, facing accusations of having manipulated these events into being, was protected by NATO who utilized their pre-existing political ties to establish themselves before the Firmament. Simultaneously they absorbed intel and technology from their then current semi-nomadic ally, supposedly for the purpose of a joint push featuring themselves as the new mediating force. More importantly they locked-out the Dolsilvecs from establishing strong ties to the Firmament.

As all of this was happening, a unity of separatist Black Cities and post-imperial breakaway states formed an alliance known as the Outer Solar Liberation Front around 4155. While the breakaway groups were not entirely united due to a great deal of ideological variation and in many cases inherited class division, common enemies drew them together. Radical idealogues exiled or escaped from the two older empires or occasionally established within the BCC would fan the flames of dissent to promote a strong, anti-imperialist movement reaching broadly across the political spectrum. Although not entirely philosophically airtight, it was perceived as a necessity to curry the favor of even aristocratic and mercantilist groups that had faced persecution or fell out with their old masters if only for the purpose of attempting to promote a united front against the colonialist threat.

While normally this would call for military intervention, a mixture of of nationalist tension, flagging economies, and a populace both dissatisfied with their status quo and unwilling to engage in open warfare with what many saw as “their own people” held off open conflict. Popular opposition to the conflict was uniform across all superpowers save but among their apparatus of government, fear grew of what this OSLF could become. It was not only perceived as an incubating empire but due to its fractured nature, a vessel for enemies to spread their influence under the guise of sweeping populist movements.

Enemies implied opposing sides however but this was where the alliance between the BCC and NATO got messy. Truthfully, NATO had always wanted an alliance with the Firmalazia Izradia but due to their standoffish nature, the BCC had to suffice. Yet tensions were also boiling between the BCC and NATO; the former’s leadership was increasingly hostile towards the control the latter was attempting to exert via influence both corpo-economic and political. This extended to astroturfed political movements and a few moments of skirmishes between certain black cities, occasionally amongst factions allied with and against NATO.

In spite of this, both would work carefully alongside one another alongside the Dolsilvec Foundation and Yrrkradian Empire. Both human superpowers had made a tantalizing offer; assistance in a liberal-democratic series of reforms to pacify internal unrest in exchange for partnership or even membership in either empire, with the Black City remaining an esteemed trade partner for both. Yet in turn, they would need to assist in the attempt to not just defeat the OSLF but also pacify the massive, unruly swathe of space it had at most tenuous control over. Even in the OSLF’s absence, it could easily turn into a breeding ground for all sorts of radicalist threats, rogue militaries, organized crime… and proxy warfare agents, something that every empire already was partaking in by 4180.

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Thus began the systematic dividing of OSLF space into what would be known as the Helios Expanse through subterfuge, color revolutions, proxy militant movements, sanctions, and other more indirect means. A notable element was the forging of alliances with the very corporate and political power groups once exiled from the great powers, slowly turning the Front’s own centerpieces of power against itself. For the already tenuous alliance between various competing ideologies, many of which even on the same end of the political spectrum, this was it being strangled in the womb. Many worlds already struggling with the troubles of running a planet let alone a systems-alliance began to break away, acquiescing to demands of democratic and economically liberalizing reforms as the sword of trade was plunged among countless others into this once hostile territory.

What was known as the Helios Subjugation would not have been possible without the vast experience of NATO and the Dolsilvec Foundation from their time spent within the Solar System. Even back on Earth, these were very, very familiar games and an interplanetary scale did not change much in many ways. The massive state and growing aristocratic-private assets of both the two empires and the conglomerate were employed with a frightening efficiency. Once stalwart strongholds of free worlds were systematically examined for any weakness, division, or uncertainty and then ruthlessly exploited whether military, religious, cultural, economic but often a combination of these factors. Yet with the ease at which the OSLF was being dismantled, bigger plans were being set into motion. An influx of foreign capital, personnel, and material in the Expanse coincided with the divvying up of its many territories amidst allies now very suspicious of one another. The next stage of the great game had begun before the OSLF had been reduced to little more than a handful of small holdout states by 4200.

It was at this time that NATO made its move with a surprise attack on contested territory between the proxy armies of itself and the Conglomerate. During the securing of multiple OSLF aligned Black Cities, the human forces moved in and with them was a detachment of Firmament military forces. Alarm bells rang across the region as the Foundation and Empire watched, a coordinated attack that seemingly spilled out of a territorial dispute morph into a full fledged shooting war, contained into territorial space bordering Conglomerate and NATO held Expanse space. What exactly kicked it off remains a topic of debate but during the battle, multiple battle-groups of seemingly “neutral” rebels managed to cut off NATO/Firmament escape routes in spite of their “recaptured” Black Cities suffering devastating damage as the massive floating cities were boarded by joint strike forces.

This ended any alliance between the Conglomerate and NATO, with much of the remaining tension in the Expanse shaken by this controversial move. Who won exactly remains difficult to determine. What was certain was that the Conglomerate had far more reach among the Helios Expanse than it was letting on and that its alliance if it could cut off and surround a human superpower, one it now found as a foe. A new cold war began as new battle lines were drawn. With the largest human superpower joining with the Firmalazia Izradia, two great powers became one known as the Unified Celestial League in 4204. While the Yrrkradian Empire was still larger, this constituted an escalation of force in its eyes and while some corners of its leadership considered a Conglomerate alliance, this idea was quickly shot down. With their impressively vast connections in the Expanse, perhaps the Conglomerate were not as meek and mediatory as Yrrkradian leadership had previously thought.

The Dolsilvec Foundation however had served as a safeguard against their attempts at coercion and subterfuge, demonstrating itself an equal in many ways to NATO. In spite of potential advantages it could have had with picking up the pieces NATO dropped, it refused an alliance with the Conglomerate. It was not long before due to increasing security concerns and near-overlap of many territories, the Dolsilvec Foundation integrated itself as a protectorate into the Yrrkradian Empire in 4208. Its leadership however operated as both advisors and increasingly partners, many of them having a bone to pick with their old foes from Earth. The Conglomerate on the other hand began to relocate its fleets and Black Cities away from the territory of both, retreating into subjugated spaces of the Expanse as well as their own assorted outer colonies beyond it. It was clear that they too had made massive gains of territory, power, manpower, and resources. All three now had to control and contest that.

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The 29 years to come would come to be known as the Veiled War as all the Black City Conglomerate, the Unified Celestial League, and the Yrrkradian Empire began to secure and expand their control over Helios’ territory. Amidst ever shifting boundaries, aggressive non-state actors, a wave of terrorism and identitarian radicalism, the mechanisms of revolution were stirring. The OSLF had disbanded sometime during this shadowy conflict but its ideas had not perished. During this interim period, as the Yrrkradians and Leaguers began a radical process of economic and political liberalization, half-measures of modernization from the past were reactivated and augmented. Popular news media celebrated this as a victory, with even Conglomerate leaders backhandedly congratulating both for entering modern times. Yet beneath the media hubbub, the mass celebrations, and the ongoing heating-up cold war, much was changing. Once great houses and aristocracies were moving from uniforms into business suits, from their fortresses into floating commerce stations, and from techno-serfdom into wage-based extraction and AI-run foreign holdings. The system had changed, its casualties had not.

All across the Helios Expanse, the survivors of the OSLF and those who still believed in its idea were gathering beneath the veneer of civil unrest and mass displacement amidst growing class division and stratification. The Black City Conglomerate was aware of this; it had absorbed many of the larger surviving OSLF factions. Yet the internal Front conflicts it participated meant a large portion saw them as no better than any other empire, simply more clever. Both sides however were clever enough not to make their conflicts too overt, for all the shadow engagements they had, revealing that the front’s inheritors were far from declawed after all these years. While the Conglomerate could rile up populist civilian discontent, it was also reliant on collaboration with the ruling apparatus of private enterprise and supporting government infrastructure.

The Intranszjednota or Intransigence had no issue with the lack of such. They were slow to realize it but the two greater empires were unintentionally fuelling the rise of not only revolutionary, anti-imperial sentiment but aptly named, highly intransigent organization. There was a problem however; they could not actually form an alliance to oppose them. Many of them regarded the growing number of defective worlds, nomad fleets, even rogue militaries as little more than flashes of the pan. They had bigger fish to fry; one another. That the Conglomerate was taking issue with them was their own natural “barrier” against these motley guerillas and it freed up time for the escalation of their arms race. Human and alien technological exchange was accelerating the rate at which weaponry became more lethal and soon, it would be used.

In 4229, a tense naval standoff between the Yrrkradians and the League erupted into full on salvos when a series of the latter’s patrol vessels erupted into flames while they tailed a drone controller reconnaissance ship from the latter. As the conflict began to spread amidst a concentrated League push into Yrrkradian territory, the Conglomerate made its move. On a world where a Yrrkradian/League proxy war was dying down due to Intransigence military operations, a militarized Black City (converted into a massive battlestation) appeared near the planet’s orbit. It refused any orders to vacate the area and began to besiege the Intransigent fleet located in the area, prompting the unleashing of experimental, ethereal anti-orbital weaponry, viciously scourging the massive vessel and beginning open conflict between both factions. The Reckoning of Empires had begun.

For a bloody four year period, the all-out war that had been building finally was unleashed upon an only partially recovered galaxy. The massive League push into Yrrkradian territory gutted massive swathes of its territory, reducing them to half of their original size (roughly as large as the UCL). Yet it was blunted through questionable usage of vrexul legions and hive ships, with the League employing its own groups of the mighty biomechanical arthropods. The ensuing carnage devastated both as the species was forced to slaughter its own; even as the ashes were not fully settled, many left in disgust over the wanton slaughter. In the meantime, mass swathes of tenuously held League territory bordering the conflict between the Conglomerate and Intransigence were caught up in the violence. An alliance of convenience was proposed against the severely underestimated Intransigence as fleets dueled across border territories. Desperate to recover their various allied proxy-states, the League was able to break on through Intransigence naval lines but found themselves battling heavily entrenched revolutionaries and irregulars on the ground. The Conglomerate had been put into the position of holding back the Intransigent navy yet unwilling to further bleed for those who had betrayed it, left them to deal with this new threat on their own.

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In 4233, a formal ceasefire was announced but once again, the galactic paradigm had irrevocably shifted. A new power had risen; one that from the ruins of three great empires now congealed and began to unify, sweeping across once central space in great numbers. Yrrkradia, while still a massive empire, had begun to suffer once more under the strain of its own weight after having lost so much. Internal factions loyal to and skeptical of its Emperor’s rule began to split its power further as the specter of warlordism began to rear its head. The League meanwhile began to face a renewed level of civil unrest as anti-war protests and a divided political hierarchy criticized the costly offensive and the loss of core territories. The Black City Conglomerate recoiled from the loss of multiple of its powerful floating habitations yet it did not walk away empty handed. Various isolated League and Yrrkradian territories found themselves under new rulership as its titular space stations demonstrated their worth as staging grounds and mobile command centers. This would fuel an expansion beyond the Expanse’s known territories into various once fringe worlds.

The most important development was the establishment of the Intranszjednota as the fourth great power. In a mere four years, it had expanded its territories considerably and even gained a sizable following among the still considerable neutral systems. While it remains the smallest of the four hegemons, its growth and rise in power is still the fastest. This brings us to our present day, four years after the Reckoning, as once more a game of proxy wars, humanitarian involvement, shifting tides of allegiance, and covert operations has begun again.
 

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Species



Humanity


Throughout the Expanse, humans are roughly the third most populous species after Celaderaka and Tarrhaidim. They are found in practically every rung of society. Many of them seem to occupy mid to lower-class positions nowadays with most of those higher up to have managed to hold onto their positions through connections and leeway with the changing rulership scenario. Their populations in some places even outnumber native alien species. A number exist in less fortunate regions and share this stigma though to a far less severe extent. This appears to correlate with how many other aliens they are living with as well the level of economic disparity experienced.

They are primarily associated with the UCL and to a lesser extent the Yrrkradian Dominion. Their numbers are greater in the former though they are beginning to even out with alien populations rising and emigration towards various neutral territories under economic stress. They utilize a growing though relatively mild level of augmentation in order to survive in increasingly unusual environments far from Earth’s boundaries. They have an association with both wealth and prominence as well as snobbishness in some corners due to the UCL being also prominent in terms of its scielto population. Meanwhile in the Yrrkradian Empire they are seen as hardy and stern though somewhat prone to rowdiness and inconsistent in terms of loyalty towards either the Emperor or the various warlords. They are growing in number among the Conglomerate though many of the aliens who comprise it have very mixed feelings on them due to their history of manipulation and conquest during the Helios Subjugation. In the Intransigence this is somewhat toned down due to its human populace having comprised a not insignificant number of the first to revolt against imperial masters.


Tarrhaidim

Pronounced “tar-high-deem”. They are large bipedal organisms resembling rotted eyeless humanoids, covered in hardened fungoid growth. Maws full of jagged pointed formations noted for appearing to have rotted flesh. They are a fungoid-like organism, genderless and able to reproduce asexually on occasion or by combining large amounts of reproductive biomatter into communal “spawning globes”. They are capable of heavily modifying and selectively mutating their own biomatter and have an unusual tendency to "bolt" clothing, equipment, gear, and armour into their bodies. They are durable creatures with noted regenerative capabilities and the ability to survive on very little (think dirt, rotting wood, and sunlight). They are the most populous species of the Helios Expanse, the second-most in the Yrrkradian Empire, and their numbers are steadily increasing in both League and independent territories.

Their homeworld is unknown but some theorize they might not have had one but were simply scattered across the stars on spore-filled comets by some unknown planet-sized void-entity believed to be the so-called "Nexus of Teeth" (a colossal, revolting swirl of decomposing, regenerating mushroom-like biomatter filled with hundreds of tooth-like jagged protrusions) their religion worships. Many have emigrated as refugees out of the Helios Expanse to escape the conflicts resulting from imperial power games, moving to established nation-worlds or independent colonies. A massive number of them however comprise countless Expanse militias while they make up a growing number of Yrrkradian and Intransigence troops. They are somewhat unwelcome among the Conglomerate due to various prior conflicts between their species and those of its many lesser known alien ones. The League is gradually growing its number of them as it consolidates its number though many of these tend to be from leadership or more higher class backgrounds.

Throughout the more stable Helios worlds, many of them emigrated once from the less developed regions in the past but now roughly 50% of their populace lives in urbanized or agricultural zones, also comprising many of its armed forces. This is less so for those who have immigrated to independent colonies and the League, likely due to them disliking the way their species typically organizes itself. They have an above-average amount of etherealists often interpreting their powers through the lens of their esoteric religion, which has swelled to include an increasingly larger number of non-Tarrhaidim. It is said that while the Celaderaka might be better fighters on average, the Tarrhaidim usually create better leaders.

Visual References: https://ibb.co/album/5gJ580


Vrexul



Pronounced “vuh-rex-sull”. Massive and mysterious creatures that may not even be native to the known galaxy due to the ambiguity of their origins. They resemble enormous arthropods with dense carapaces bristling with cybernetics and integrated external biomass like living biomechanical juggernauts. They can move bipedally or on up to around 30 limbs. On average they are between seven and ten feet tall with a few species being around five foot six and a few rare specimens around 20. They are pioneers and leaders when it comes to augmentation and bio-technology “encoded” into their bodies, capable of morphing out of what seems like inert carapace and flesh. This is to the extent some of them are basically small habitats for performance-enhancing symbiotes and hidden integrated tools. In spite of being reminiscent of arthropods such as ground and rove beetles, decapods, myriapods, huntsman and wolf spiders, earwigs, crickets, and so on, their populations are not particularly large due to a variety of ground-up population controls. They do not have many etherealists but those that do so are renowned for their terrifying, uncomfortable powers. Attempts to externally install ethereal capabilities have seen only mixed results though their ethereal population is growing.

Their prominence on the galactic stage coincided with the heightening of tensions between the great powers, something that causes them to be viewed with great suspicion in some corners of the galaxy. Many of them united with the Dominion initially though the League found more of their lost hive ships, filled with thousands of cryogenically slumbering eggs. The Conglomerate however was very selective with which ones it would actually contact and their leadership seems wary of them for still unknown reasons. While their role in the ensuing interstellar conflicts is well known, what is often skimmed over is the fact that many vrexul did not pick a side. More than a few simply moved to independent colonies or remained wandering across the stars, occasionally moving into occupied spaces. Sometimes they were looking for quiet places to settle and others they were scouring for any signs of their enigmatic past. This has brought them into conflict with colonists, corporations, pirates, and the great powers even though they typically do not tend to stick around for long. They heavily concentrated in Intransigent space after the Reckoning of Empires which feeds fears of a potential pan-vrexul ideological movement. In fact, they are often the species most associated with it as it possesses the greatest number of hive ships.

They are less common than before in League space in the wake of the post-war riots, wherein vrexul hive ships demonstrated against the brutal violence forced against their Yrrkradian counterparts. These were violently suppressed in one of the darkest chapters of UCL history, contributing to a sharp drop in their vrexul population with mass death and exoduses. Some of their fleets are slowly returning to League space due to new freedoms and territories being granted to those that do. Many of those who stayed loyal to Yrrkradia would later form the elite cadres of its warriors even if it their numbers are not at pre-Reckoning levels. A number of smaller enclaves are located in the Helios Expanse but are well hidden subterranean cities, often attempting to avoid the messy politics of the region. They are not adverse to integrating into society as a whole though it is easier on independent colonial worlds beyond the Expanse as lately, they have grown a fearsome reputation due to the Assembly’s military involvement in the region. A large number of their fleets comprise the Frontier Solar Assembly to the extent that the enormous sapient cybernetic, biological, and ethereal cloudlike supercomputers they use hold leadership positions. Vrexul will often try to avoid fighting one another and in many corners, the idea of a pan-Vrexul alliance is gaining traction.


Vrexul references: https://ibb.co/album/PZFxpp


Gealtirocht


Pronounced “gee-ow-tee-rocked” with the "gee" pronounced like in "geese". These tall creatures evolved from some sort of eel-like creature, visually somewhere between the Chimera from the Resistance and the Elites from Halo. They are around six and a half to eight feet on average with powerful digitigrade legs, four eyes (two on each side of their bony ridged heads), long multi-jointed six-fingered arms, and slightly elongated heads thicker at the forehead and slimming downwards to powerful fang-filled mouths. Some species even have long lizard-like tails and others shorter additional arms that have retractable spines. All however have an eye-like organ called the speirfhaire at the front of their brain capable of detecting ethereal presences though the extent to which depends on how well they have honed their skill. They have a very high number of naturally born ethereologists, coinciding with a baseline slight psycho-ethereal capability involving the ability to visualize an enormous series of extradimensional eel-like creatures in their dreams though some have found ways to remove this aspect from themselves.

They are the other alien race that comprises a large part of the Intransigence, having transitioned from nomadic high-tech tribes folk and feudalism to a sort of de-stratified classless enviro-collectivist society with even more technology albeit after a period of immense upheaval as they once stood poised to become a great power. Many attempted to influence the outcome of their conflicts by providing intelligence and material support to both and in the process, access their rich resources. They boiled into a schism with the species dividing between loose associations of tribes, now spacefaring, and the emergent kingdoms that a large part was simply integrated into the aristocracy and business-owning classes of the great hegemons. Many of the old feudalist royal families allied with either the Yrrkradians or League while the Conglomerate enjoys a mixture of both royalist and anarchic groups. The Intransigence meanwhile strongly prefers its more revolutionary, nomadic groups and they comprise a huge portion of their political and military power. They are the alien species associated with it the most after the vrexul. During the Reckoning, they developed a reputation for being excellent marksmen, scouts, and assault troopers. They were often used to fight the Vrexul as well though there is very little emnity between them.

Public perception of them is usually positive (relative to everyone else) though some find them arrogant or unintentionally dismissive. Many of them have a reputation as athletes and explorers; they are capable of great running speed and no other species is known to jump as high. Those in the League are seen as either bold freedom fighters who are honest and will not stop until they get the truth or egotistical clout-chasers always trying to curry favors with their betters. They have often been viewed as very outgoing and raucous folks if having some trouble or needless opposition to the complexities of a growing alliance built a large part on military unity. Yrrkradian ones are noted for being dour and prideful, grimly concerned with duty, and willing to endure much punishment and suffering for their aspirations on top of being very cold-blooded. Those with the Conglomerate are noted for being far less tribal, heathen, or otherwise traditional in their thinking due to the cyber-bureaucraticzed nature of the black cities.

Gealtirocht references: Gealtirocht References


Scielto


Eerie creatures with semi-transparent vein-filled skin, tall and slender. They have a humanoid shape but sparse, featureless bodies with notably flat, shovel-like heads similar to planarians/flatworms devoid of visible eyes. They are similar to the XCOM2 sectoids but with more reserved, eerily calm features and retractable, wavey, tendril-like “wings” that emerge from their backs, in reality, lengthy nerve clusters attached to cartilaginous protrusions that naturally generate ethereal energy. Their “skin” looks more akin to highly stretched membranes and one can view their teeth and bones behind it along with any implants and even ethereal energy coursing beneath it along with their twisting almost darkly metallic and wood-looking bones. However, some do not have this skin either by choice or due to their subspecies. They are not very frail in spite of their racial stereotypes with tough self-mending bones. They come from worlds rich in ambient ethereal energy meaning they are all capable of flight if the concentrations are high enough or with certain augmentations if not, usually resorting to hovering if they lack ideal conditions. As expected, every scielto regardless of the particular species is an etherealist; practically born with ether within their bodies and able to manipulate it to an extent even before their births.

For a while the scielto were seen as the primary force of stabilization in the known universe with the Firmalazia Izradia having been seen as second only to Yrrkradia in its glory days in splendor. As such they were associated with haughty opulence and an intense pride in their culture and achievements. This frequently turned into chauvinistic tendencies though this was primarily viewed among its upper classes due to the heavy restrictions on the liberties of its working masses. They originally used to rule various gealtirocht worlds as lords, having colonized various worlds the species inhabited as well as once having owned countless tarrhaidim as slaves. The vrexul have records of them going back centuries where they often warred over control of distant systems while they often were old allies of praolzvnevatz nomad fleets. The celaderaka on the other hand were ambivalent towards them, knowing that when they showed up they were going to be involved in a war or an alliance geared towards one. Unztadtlige on the other hand taught them a degree of advanced technology but worsening Firmament and Yrrkradian relations put an end to this. They wanted to avoid being caught between either empire.

They have a reputation for being haughty aristocrats, either viewed with magical awe or with sneering disgust (or cold discomfort) depending on where you are. A large part of this is due to the fact that all of them are ethereologists with a reputation as “witch-folk” in some corners of space. A large number of scielto can be found in the middle to lower classes of most major population centres. Strangely enough, the "skinless" variants are common though most of them cannot fly for prolonged periods. They often live in tight-knit groups as workers and for some reason like to set up their settlements in large bodies of water as well as swamps. Some of them have small airborne bases but these are typically for the ultra-wealthy and viewed with either envious admiration or seething contempt by many of those below them regardless of species. Quite a few of them are known to work security enough that is a stereotype though statistically far more of them are found in manual labour, accounting, or various ethereal-related fields where there is typically a shortage of positions for the skills many of them were trained in.

Scielto References: Scielto References

Unztadtlige


Pronounced “oun-stad-lee-gah”. These organisms are essentially cyborg coral colonies; gestalt beings made of various networked organisms encased and optionally protruding from rocks with high metallic content. Contrary to popular belief, they are not hive minds with each colony being considered its own “state” and the actual states made of many individuals being considered by them massive confederations known as bergaverbandes (“mountain unions”). They are known for being master terraformers which have made them beloved in many corners of space. However, in recent years they have also grown a reputation for being ruthless mercenaries as well. They manifest in a variety of shapes from hulking four or two-legged robots to essentially anti-gravitational tanks amongst others. Etherealists are rare amongst them though some lineages have inherited specialized parasite-like organisms that essentially grant them such capabilities.

They come from regions that are mostly populated by independent worlds with most of them having left their world of origin as it is currently undergoing an incredibly large-scale environmental repair due to generations of heavy pollution. With no real outside interference, they spread to the stars and immediately became valued due to their skills not only in mining, repair, heavy industries, and conflict but most importantly, terraforming. While the Vrexul do have similar tech, the Unztadtlige have far more experience and a wider range. They are fairly committed to environmentalism in spite of their business-heavy culture, helping to introduce various "green" technologies across the stars though it was not really a surprise that larger numbers of Bergaverbandes are increasingly moving into League and Conglomerate territory. Many of these rocky alien alliances have begun turning their industrial capacity towards a massive armament campaign as well as one of increasing military output. To many in the League's military leadership, the unztadtlige are the equivalents of the towering vrexul or rather, their superiors in combat.

Unztadlige had actually moved into what was once Yrrkradian space years before the hostilities were at a notable level and frequently provided services to various guilds and members of the ruling classes. A number of them headed mechanics and engineering guilds with some even having leadership roles in the military. In the initial phases of the war, they comprised a large portion of the mercenary groups fighting and frequently were the heads of armor divisions for the Dominion. The end of the war did see many of these defecting to the UCL or revealing themselves to have changed allegiances covertly. Many did this to to acquire material and ideological support for a leg up on their rival bergaverbandes. A number however grew disillusioned with the amount of bloodshed and suffering the war brought and became independents or in a smaller number of cases, joined the Intransigence. They are seen as figures who while highly knowledgeable and capable, are narrow in their goals and rather cold towards others. In less urbanized and industrialized areas, they have a less cold reputation, often being active in agricultural programs and serving as the (not as literal) bedrock of many smaller communities especially in administrative and leadership roles.




Voidhangers


Voidhangers are an offshoot of humanity with their origins in lost expeditions during the early days of interstellar travel. Many fleets were lost to the unknown in freak faster-than-light jump accidents or wandered into regions of space where the boundary between realspace where the Oneiric Chasm was far weaker. Countless lives were lost but in spite of the numerous mishaps, humanity survived and the unusual celestial forces at play forged them into something else entirely. Voidhangers still retain their humanoid appearance but have darker skin colours in shades including purple, blue, and grey and often more slender and sleek bodies. Their skin is partially transparent almost like the scielto and is occasionally capable of bioluminescence. Many have mutations that cause them to partially resemble certain plankton or jellyfish, manifesting as additional limbs normally used for void-borne travel. Elongated predatory skulls and mouthparts, sometimes no actual eyes as much as ocular-cellular patches over their faces, claw-fins emerging from their sides, even veils of membranous ether-bacteriological matter that shroud them - they are highly varied beings.

They spread out across large nomadic fleets, rarely staying in one spot for too long. Many of them are typically seen as pragmatic or skeptical towards interstellar politics beyond their own survival. This doesn't make them immune to propaganda but they have a reputation for being fickle in their political alignments and are best described as "neutral" in most cases. As hostilities increased across the stars, they found it difficult to navigate and frequently all but coerced into the fleets of the great powers. The outer expanses and independent colonies were hostile towards them due to there being concerns they could be foreign agents among the legitimate migrants. During the war, some of it would appear justified as they proved to be deadly ship-to-ship raiders and naturally worked well as infiltrators and guerillas, with a number of them winning worlds of their own in their service to both powers. A large number of their youth have been riled up with the Reckoning’s end as well as older nomad fleets and often live in the gray areas of the law. There are controversies that the ones that were allowed to settle were those willing to allow more foreign control over them which has steadily made a number of the youth turn over to various Black Cities and often serve as their elite vanguards and often most hardened supporters.

Wherever they are, they have a strong reputation as pilots, shipbreakers, cargo haulers, explorers, ether-manipulators, and other careers involving deep space or otherworldly powers. Some do see them as grubby and thieving, little more than parasites taking advantage of a vulnerable status but in other corners, they are romanticized as modern-day argonauts or swashbuckling adventurers. Due to the recent recruitment drive by the Intransigence, many have started being stereotyped as potential radicals to outright terrorists waiting to act. They are a somewhat romanticized people; with nowhere to truly call their own and evolved to live in the strange coldness of space, they are also seen as adventurers and noble swashbucklers, something that occasionally works to their benefit and isn't necessarily 100% divorced from reality. Many of them can come off as aloof and a large percentage still prefer to live outside of any known empire or even refusing to orbit the Frontier Solar Assembly.


Celaderaka


Pronounced as “sell-ah-durrr-ah-kah”. Also known as lavabloods, the celaderaka are a species of bipedal creatures with flesh that appears to be made of a mixture of dried and solidified molten magma and darkly coloured and heavily charred muscle matter mixed with a kind of calcified bone-like material. Skeletal ridges frequently emerge from their back, shoulders, and arms often sharp or serrated. With mouths full of numerous pointed teeth and hands ending in four to eight fingered claws, they have an appearance as demonic as it is predatory. They descend primarily from rocky, mountainous worlds and arid landscapes, capable of living even in the borderline volcanic territory. By nature they are adept at climbing and navigating over rough terrain as well as digging and mining though contrary to some stereotypes, they are not immune to flames; only resistant though sometimes to an impressive degree. Many of them however have naturally occurring ethereal capabilities due to high concentrations in their homeworlds to the extent some are capable of naturally absorbing it. They tend to use a mixture of cybernetic and ethereal modifications with bioaugmentation being a fairly new field for them..

They were known for having been run by brutal warlords and loosely-aligned coalition groups in territorial conflicts spanning back to the last years of their pre-spaceflight era in spaces neighboring the southern end of the Helios Expanse. Many of these conflicts were primarily territorial and resource-based, with many of their original fuel sources having long since been exhausted, but as they spread across their worlds quickly became battles for raw power and control justified by any and all prior violence. Some celaderaka had formed smaller (relatively) less warlike kingdoms in future Yrrkradian territory like Chalgheol (the capital world) after having grown disillusioned with how things were going in their original planetary clusters. Krasavan Tagak Tergalarkan, the Yrrkradian Immortal Emperor, is the most well-known. Many more came with him, finding new allies in the tarrhaidim tribes as well as the future foundations of the Dominion. Some of them still had ties to the petty warlords they had escaped but in the years to come, their desire to separate themselves from them would only intensify. Krasavan knew this well from the start and history would soon prove him correct.

For the longest time, they were seen as the face of the Empire and essentially were first-class citizens afforded certain rights others such as gealtirocht, humans, and the incredibly numerous tarrhaidim were not. The Yrrkradian leadership was once roughly 80% Celaderakan, now 60%. In the wake of the Reckoning, many of their homeworlds fell under League sphere of influence as well as a growing Intransigence number. Meanwhile, the Conglomerate has absorbed many of their mercenary units and independent warlords, attempting to hone them into an elite fighting core. Many of these groups have various old rivalries that can get violent though this is less so among those from the Intransigence and the Conglomerate.

The celaderaka are seen as a strict and harsh people with a borderline reactionary disdain for weakness, progression, and novelty that will stay the course regardless of the supposed moral haranguing of their critics and compatriots alike. This is primarily due to most media exposure of their kind being those of official junta-run channels and their specifically constructed public images of themselves. Many in the UCL see them as either an enslaved people kept in line by tyrants or little more than the true barbaric face of the Empire. The Intransigence is split as well. Some consider their regimes little more than glorified military buffer-states and others a true example of anti-colonial spirit. Others claim they have the same revolutionary potential as any other species but they must be given the conditions to truly unleash it first, even if a number of them are siding with the Conglomerate in the interests of their own survival and power.

The Empire of course has a very favourable view of them in its media but there is a growing tension against them as they are associated with highly traditionalist, hard-headed parts of the aristocracy. The Krasavan regime is supported by what they claim are moderate factions of them and thus has welcomed some of their older kingdoms from which they emigrated into their ranks while. The League claims to only work with the exiled governments for safety concerns and usually holds their Celaderakan allies up as examples of democratic liberalization and its virtues against brutal tyranny and cumbersome authority. The Conglomerate has revealed itself to be very popular not just with their diaspora but also various growing warlord alliances. They see the technocratic Black Cities as a potential new way forward for themselves, resulting in very close political and military ties.

In the Helios Expanse, they are a varyingly populous alien species and can be found in many of the same walks of life as the tarrhaidim and humanity. They have the largest refugee populace, primarily distributed to the countryside though before the war started was starting to become more populous in urban areas. This is due to them being associated with the turbulent and brutal regimes many of them escaped from. Many of them fill out the lower classes and are rarely viewed kindly unless by the military or certain dissident groups looking to recruit them into their ranks. A number of them have formed their own autonomous states in the mountains or deserts as well as nomad fleets or space stations. They can frequently be seen assisting and accepting those from the urban and agricultural regions. They are often associated with manual labor positions as well as bounty hunting, criminal activity, or working as contractors for military groups. It is known however that their militias are often the most dangerous given how many of them have a large degree of military experience from their old kingdoms.

Celaderaka References: https://ibb.co/album/svwtzC


Praolznevatz


Similar to the voidhangers, the praolznevatz are an offshoot of another species. In their case, they are distantly related to the vrexul though the exact nature of this remains unknown. While the vrexul represents a fairly wide range of arthropod species, the praolnznevatz are more limited, primarily resembling large deepwater shrimps, amphipods, and small planktonic crustaceans such as phronima and copepods. Both species grow to roughly the same sizes while being capable of bipedal or multi-limbed travel but what immediately becomes strikingly dissimilar is the fact that the praolznevatz are varyingly transparent with smoother carapaces, giving them a disturbingly wraithlike appearance. This is due to them being the only known species that can live within areas where unreality overlaps reality, capable of naturally generating and absorbing dangerous foreign energies. They can fly in areas where the ether concentrations are high enough or hover if they are not sufficient. Their physical senses are not as well developed as their more materially-dwelling counterparts but they are naturally highly adept at detecting, identifying, and analyzing unearthly energies with many of them in spite of their sapience inheriting predatory instincts.

It is unknown when exactly they branched from their more corporeal counterparts but they are often associated with tales of ghostly beings speaking the same language and utilizing similar technology. In spite of this, they were never actually a hidden species as much as a somewhat reclusive one, often serving a client role to the great hegemons but in particular frequently working with the Black City Conglomerate. A sizeable portion of them can be found in high ranking positions with a few smaller black cities functionally run by these aliens. Their expertise in shipbuilding, maintenance, but also ethereal technology made them highly sought after though they were aggressively independent to the point of guarding their secrets closely. This is something they shared with the unztadtlige bergaverbandes and to an extent various nomadic gealtirocht groups. In the four years after the Reckoning of Empires, a growing number of them have begun leaning more towards the Intransigence in spite of somewhat cold relations between them and the vrexul, something that often manifested as both staying out of one another’s way. It is known that a few praolznevatz run black cities run host a notable League or Dominion contingent, suggesting they are hardly united in therms of allegiances.



Species Loadout Guide

Humanity


Humanity is usually closest to the classic ideas of space marines in popular science fiction, military or otherwise. They tend to typically wear partially powered armour to larger full on exoskeletal suits and with the proliferation of augmentation technology, even backwater colonial militias can usually afford to use a number of usually cybernetic but recently fairly regulated biological augmentation tech to help close the gap between humanity and the often far more powerful alien species. The specifics of how they are armed, augmented, trained, and otherwise made combat ready can vary wildly given how often humans appear throughout all five factions. They are most well established in the UCL where their fully encasing armour, striking blue visors, and large electro-propellant rifles have made them an image both respected and feared across the stars.

Elsewhere however they tend to prioritize lighter semi-powered armour, something the League is recently doing to cut down on costs and open up new strategic avenues. Usually the weaker protection is compensated by upgrades such as specialize hidden ports that synchronize with one's own augmentations, partially biological construction allowing for additional weaponry and unique upgrades, and even void-evoking enchantments that can both protect from and enhance ethereal powers. Humans usually fight in tightly coordinated squads with very specific roles, sacrificing individual versatility for unified group readiness against a wide range of scenarios.

Humans typically are not as heavily augmented as other aliens, keeping the majority of their enhancements under the skin. They are more likely to use armour that has heavy additional features such as weaponry, scanners, and hardpoints but those aligned with the FSA are considerably less adverse to extensively enhancing their bodies. Typically human armed forces in League space will go for just a few specific upgrades to bodily capabilities while the Assembly will be more extensive. Some of them can generate bone-like armour around their bodies as well as having additional organs capable of storing excess ether, putting these post-humans on a level not far from certain alien species.

The Empire is considerably less regulated about this beyond a few of its absorbed military forces and while this means many of its augmentations are performed under less than ideal to outright dangerous conditions, it has resulted in augmented humans at once more ghoulish and freakishly powerful than their baseline counterparts elsewhere. Human ethereality is not as well studied as it is for other races but they seem to prefer a wide range of spells typically focused on a mixture of offence and defence that may not excel in one particular area but do allow them to rapidly respond to threats quite quickly, relying moreso usually on weaponry, tactics, and armour as opposed to supernatural might.


Tarrhaidim


The tarrhaidim are not far from humans in some ways in terms of choice in weapons, tactics, and gear which results in them often working well together. Where they differ are in a number of specifics. The tarrhaidim are usually associated with being less high-tech and used to fighting as guerillas, something that is consistent with their history of civil wars and asymmetrical combat against one another and larger hegemonic forces. Their weapons however tend to have ruggedness and high calibre power in the place of high tech construction, typically adopting the Yrrkradian guideline of versatile as well as easily void-touched weapons. They are known to bolt their armour into their own bodies, often associated with lighter synthetic armour but a number of groups are not adverse to specialized mutagenic armour partially grown from their own bodies or specialized battlesuits that use their own internal worm-ridden biologies to power themselves.

Although they are not extraordinarily fast or strong, many of them use exoskeletal frames around their arms and legs to boost their speed and strength, making them a force that can move quite quickly while lugging around heavier weapons without too much trouble though not often to the extent of professional power armoured forces in terms of physical capability. They have a reputation for their skill in explosive traps, crew served weapons, long range skirmishing, and combat in rural areas.

As fungoid masses, the tarrhaidim are usually host to a variety of organisms (primarily fungoid of vegetation) which perform various functions within their bodies. Militarily, this means that they have so many differing internal components that it's sometimes hard to tell what is an augmentation and what is some sort of vegetation or creature that lives within as a regulatory component. This does not stop them from loading up often heavily on augmentations of all sorts though what they are able to afford tends to depend on market or logistical conditions. It is to the extent a number of them will appear as either wired-up semi-metallic cyborgs, living lanterns emitting a surreal aura, or shadowy and overgrown monstrosities.

They focus primarily on survival typically; enhancing their healing, functional organ redundancies (occasionally with actual organs or organisms), power conservation and rapid-photosynthesis tech, but it is not uncommon to see more rough bodily modifications such as reactive plating, targeting beams, and even a few weapon systems burrowed into their bodies. Their etherealism is linked heavily to their faith and tends to come in the form of strange worm-creatures summoned rom beyond as well as strange frothy mossy growths, typically focusing on ravaging the enemy with these disruptive annelid predators or creating deceptively powerful barriers as well as partially blurring realspace with strange fluids injected right beneath its surface. While they aren’t necessarily more durable than the unztadtlige or vrexul, they can sometimes sustain injuries including decapitation and being chopped in half and regenerate lost biomass faster than any other species.


Vrexul


As the second largest of the listed species, the vrexul are rivalled only by the unztadtlige in terms of raw power. As befitting of their powerful bodies, they are typically outfitted in such a way they resemble smaller mecha in terms of the raw degree of firepower at their disposal. For example, the most well known vrexul weapon is an "assault rifle" known as the hellhammer which has its origins as an autocannon originally mounted on the automatons used to guard their larvae during their exodus. As a rifle, it is no less fearsome, firing armour piercing high explosive shells with semi-biological electro-thermal chemical mechanisms, feared throughout UCL space for its destructive power. Their armour is layered over and partially integrated into their own carapaces, interlinking with complex networks of augmentations, offering impressive protection and enhanced physical capabilities. They are known to employ directional energy shielding, highly durable and capable of being fired through. While it does only protect from a single direction, they combine this with either ruthless covering fire advances or entrenching themselves into tough spots, getting under their enemies' skin with their further increased survivability.

They often carry a number of additional weapons encoded into their bodies or their armour, typically intended for shorter ranges or specialized purposes such as light artillery and anti-vehicular engagement. In spite of their arthropod nature, the vrexul do not often deploy in enormous numbers themselves, often commanding large groups of half synthetic half biological automatons that fulfill various other roles in combat, tying up enemies and helping to provide additional harassment and pinning fire while larger and more heavily armed vrexul viciously attack the toughest enemies or entrench themselves to weather enemy onslaughts.

With the most advanced augmentation capabilities, the vrexul carry an impressive amount that go beyond merely just enhancing their baseline physicality. Integrated multifunctional tool-limbs, various drone-organisms they can control nesting in their bodies, ethereal-radiation absorbing ether-shock glands - they are living armouries not just in terms of weaponry but their complex additions to their towering forms. These vary wildly from vrexul to vrexul, typically based on their personal preferences, but outside of the Intransigence, they are known to work more "conventional" technologies into their carapaces giving them a bit of a slightly mix-and-match appearance. The most common augmentations are extra arms or legs, frequently used to assist with movement, close quarters combat, and handling multiple weapons (sometimes said limbs will morph into said weapons).

Recently, many have taken to specialized sub-brains that help them with keeping track of multiple objects, locations, and entities. Etherealists are not very common amongst them though that number is steadily growing. Those that they do have are protected and tend to have a near legendary status amongst friend or foe, rupturing the air with foul otherworldly miasma to overwhelm defensive positions, shrouding their allies in fields of transparent void-shells from gunfire, or causing wild flailing arthropod limbs drenched in unearthly light to emerge from thin air, tearing and flailing away at shocked foes. Those who possess not only said void-borne abilities and have been infested with their strange biocomputer-clouds are an even higher magnitude of power, respected and feared as supernatural infantry-dreadnoughts.


Praolznevatz


As relatives of the vrexul, the praolnevatz do not kit themselves out too differently from their gnarlier cousins. They are not as physically powerful and their carapaces do not have the same protective capabilities. In spite of being even more alien, they are compatible with many of the same upgrades and gear but they differ in that they tend to work far more with ethereal-oriented loadouts and direct energy weapons. As they are all naturally etherealists, they focus less on the controlled mutagenics of their brethren and instead on their unearthly powers. The vrexul have sledgehammer power and stalwart ruggedness while the praolznevatz choose obfuscating movement and overwhelming eldritch energy.

This has led to some interesting technology building off of their own homegrown creations synthesized with those of the rest of the pact. The most common of these are direct-energy weapons that can tap into their users own ethereal reserves, allowing them to condition and reshape the nature and effects of their gunfire. They also use a number of shield generators that also can network with their supernatural biologies, something that even extends to the cyborg minions that accompany them into battle though they do not deploy them in as large of numbers as their more corporeal companions might. In battle, they are typically deployed to tie up, confuse, and stop enemy advances in their tracks with their numerous supernatural abilities capable of throwing even the most barbaric of onslaughts into chaotic disarray.

Praolznevatz augmentations are as varied as those of the vrexul but typically focus almost entirely on their void-inclined biology, making them more of nests of ghosts rather than nests of insects in how this appears. This usually comes in the form of various ethereal augmentations; "spells" that are not cast but embedded into their transparent, occasionally luminous bodies that make them appear as living snapshots of the monstrously arcane, occult depths. Esoteric text in their borderline incomprehensible language, arranged in forms that make the characters look like living, twitching limbs can be seen if you look close enough but those are not the only things imbuing them with power - they are living temples to powers not of this world.

A number of void-dwelling creatures have been domesticated or genetically modified to nest in their bodies and can often be seen moving about within, serving as additional organisms, repairing major damages, or increasing the potency of their unearthly skills. In combat, this occult mastery manifests in powerful projectile bombardments capable of putting even heavy armour under alert while the praolznevatz dash forward with chilling speed, disrupting electronic and ethereal scanning with the ripple-waves they send. Their shots ravage enemies with hungry, carnivorous power devouring armour and flesh as they unleash large concentrations of this deadly intensity within fairly short time frames, falling back and leaving enemies shattered in their wake. The effect it can have on morale is sometimes greater than its practical effectiveness.


Celaderaka

Demonic in appearance and with a reputation for militancy, the celaderaka, whether by the most barbaric or noble examples of their kind, are always prepared to fight regardless of how high or low tech their equipment is. Celaderakan armour is tough and form fitting, in many cases mistaken for their already rocky almost shell-like flesh when in reality it is partially built into it in a way similar to the vrexul. Much of their weaponry while well crafted is fairly simple at heart, simply being power slug-flinging guns or high output direct energy options, well adapted for combat in mountainous regions with long range and good controllability. They excel in particular with far more close combat options than most, having very well developed melee weapons built into their suits or even attached to their feet and legs whether they are blades, claw sheaths, or specialized force-projectors that send shockwaves into whatever they smash.

They are known to even use grappling hooks modified to be whips, ending with cruel curving blades capable of being used to swing about or slice enemies from a distance. They are known for their excellent shotgun designs, melding tight spread clusters with ripping flechette payloads sometimes capable of phasing through shielding whether purely energy or even ethereal. This has led to a reputation of them being excellent at assaults and boarding action, both true, but they are no slouches in fighting over rough terrain over longer ranges either.

Their augmentations primarily focus on durability and aggression, from adrenal stimulant glands and regenerative nanomachine nests to ether absorption modules and sensors designed to detect enemy melee motions up close and alert the brain immediately. They do not tend to augment themselves as heavily though there has been a trend lately of going full cyborg, popular among mercenaries and army veterans. The process is both expensive and stressful on top of not being properly standardized or regulated. Most of them choose to usually link their armour to their bodies then load them up with joint-based servos to increase speed and striking power.

They have a good number of etherealists who either focus on helping to move around their allies with short range teleportation or straight up launching or boosting their movement capabilities. They are not slouches around direct combat, sending beams of ripping unearthly lightning and voidborne blasts, fairly blunt in these fields but often using these powers to cover for their comrades, emphasizing inelegant blunt force power just as their more physical methods would. The most well known of their ethereal skills is gathering enough ether at a certain location then violently detonating it; a very simple skill but one that has forced enemy armour to clumsily move out of position and into the path of anti tank missiles or entrenched bunkers to turn into blast-ridden mortuaries.


Scielto

Heavenly beings at once fascinating and unsettling, the scielto boasted the most advanced technology for years and while they may have more contesting them for that slot, it's not hard to imagine why they may have the lead. Scielto armour is as artistic as it is functional, elaborately draping them in almost sculptured plated layers that can reshift and alter shape partially to better protect and fit. Specialized ether-generators on board resonate with their own natural stores of otherworldly power, making even baseline soldiers far more deadly. Shield generators can be infused with their own ether-currents and even weaponized to launch powerful shockwaves, turning the defensive into the offensive in the flick of a thought. Just as importantly is the ability of their armour to work with their ether-neural uplink implants and to assist in communicating with the large groups of automatons the scielto command into battle.

They are similar to the vrexul in this sense though they are far more loath to spill their own blue blood, preferring armies of machines that serve as conduits for their ether currents, empowered by their mere presence like armies of disciples renewed by godly blessings. Yet one should not expect them to be found wanting for individual combative power. Outside of their ethereality, the scielto pack a variety of cutting edge armaments, capable of firing ether-propelled luminescent spikes, bombs containing exploding into scaled down void-storms, and flocks of target-homing energy bolts. Combined with the ability to fly in ether-heavy environments and to hover elsewhere, they are fearsome to face regardless of the area.

The scielto are skeptical of most augmentations with a few key exceptions, disliking biological ones mostly on cultural and religious grounds. After all, is not their usage something that makes one have more in common with lesser species and their weak, foul bodies as opposed to divine perfection of the sky-chosen? Granted, the influence of humanity and changing social standards have gradually diminished the stigma but the scielto typically choose those which amplify their own power, emphasizing vast stores of energy and the ability to manipulate their ether when cast as if by a divine hand.

They are especially fond of those that assist them in "stacking" augmenting auras on top of one another, melding or overlapping otherwise conflicting streams of energy as well as specialized "tracer" augmentations that allow them to better sense target positions by their void-signatures, making them excellent for bombarding at further ranges. Each scielto is a painter with unearthly powers as their materials but the forms they take are as majestic as they are terrible to behold or receive. They are known for sending powerful directed waves of destructive power across the battlefield, capable of taking down whole squadrons, and sending lashing, twisting, serpentine beams of power to ravage wide swathes. Attempts to retaliate meet multiple defensive barriers manifested from within their casting range, covering the ruthless advance of their robotic forces. Forces that can sometimes turn into living void-bombs or be used to launch ethereal spells from directly, making even minor machines major threats under the right circumstances.


Unztadtlige


As living fortresses of armour, rock, mutated coral, and complex cybernetics, the unztadtlige can carry more and heavier armour and artillery than most vrexul. Their bodies do not often resemble single animals as much as entire partially robotic coral reefs and due to that, they are loaded out closer to armoured vehicles. Unztadtlige typically have layered composite armour out of which a number of multi-limbed tendrils, gun turrets, launcher ports, drone launch bays and so on can be seen. They often move using a number of anti-gravitational emitters hidden within their bodies. Alternatively multiple legs, treads, wheels, or even a combination of these will do. Their armoured shells contain a number of self repair mechanisms from nanobot networks to partially cybernetic symbiote creatures within bioengineered to naturally maintain them, even shield generators in some cases when they can afford them.

Weaponry includes normally crew served heavy machine guns, typically AFV mounted autocannons, and even smaller howitzers among others but a number of more fearsome options are also typically visible. Living explosive projectiles that fly or crawl after targets, high output short range beam projectors, and realspace tearing transgressor cannons, capable of creating rifts into more arcane dimensions, have given them the reputation as the most well armed of all known species. Augmentations are an odd issue; they sometimes do not really need them as their complex bodies have so many differing living components that they are redundant or will often affect a single part of themselves. That hasn't stopped relatively younger ones from trying out all kinds, typically using them to enhance the performance of their living internal maintenance organisms, combat bio-drones, and coral-like turrets. They seem to struggle with making ethereal augmentations extensively affect their entire bodies due to their gestalt consciousnesses but do have more success with a number of recently tailor-made biological and cybernetic options.

The unztadtlige do not often deploy in species-specific squads, often working to support the armour and infantry of other races for whom their services are frequently requested. When their bergaverbandes do enter the battlefield, they typically work with long range mobile bombardment, cleverly harassing infantry and light armour caught in the open while drawing and maneuvering true heavy armoured targets into deadly crossfire positions. Their immense power has not gotten to their heads and while some of them can grow to the size of actual tanks, they are known to be more cunning than they are tyrannical on the battlefield. While they are not necessarily the most mobile or quick to respond, their high endurance and ability to outshoot the enemy will make even experienced mech divisions take caution when forced to engage.

Their lower numbers of etherealists means that their powers are usually not as well understood or standardized as they are elsewhere. It is known that many of them use their ethereality less so to enhance their strengths but rather to cover their weaknesses. Many unztadtlige etherealists tend to use abilities involving short range shockwaves to knock back enemies, momentary visual obscuration via realspace tears, and sudden bursts of disorienting power to diminish enemy accuracy that are nowhere near as lethal as their mounted guns. Truly destructive casting is not unheard of, with some reputed to summon storms from the Oneiric Chasm itself and others supposedly able to call forth creatures from the void more easily than others though accurate reporting on these is difficult to find given how secretive the unztadtlige are on this field.


Voidhangers

Being a subspecies of humanity, the Voidhangers are not often armed and armoured particularly differently. Oftentimes both species will use many of the same weapons, tactics, and equipment but voidhangers do differ in a number of ways. The most obvious is how much of their armour tends to have stronger life support systems and special sealants, often placing a bigger emphasis on allowing them to recover from fire but also enhancing and boosting their own ethereal abilities. This allows many of them, even if they are not etherealists, to nonetheless generate or absorb ether into fields around themselves and have specialized void-mechanisms in their armour launch, manipulate, store, or even convert the ether into other energy sources. More mutated voidhangers can sometimes have special ports and weapons used to let their additional limbs exit or network with additional organs, granting them a number of additional advantages in combat whether in terms of hunting down, negating, or firing upon their enemies.

They are known primarily as boarding action, urban combat, and close quarters specialists along with infiltrators, snipers, and rangers. Much of their weaponry prizes higher rate of fire or precise accuracy regardless of it being ethereal, energy, or solid rounds. They tend to take a number of "homebrewed" weapons as well, usually capable of spraying otherworldly energy like flamethrowers, electrocuting targets with void-touched power, and guns firing poached abyssic parasites capable of tearing into armour or bleeding open the ether-stores of etherealists. Automatic shotguns, personal defence weapons, anti-materiel (and anti-immaterial) rifles, and carbines are their most iconic weapons. This is to the extent the most popular action movies almost exclusively depict them using only four weapon types with compact PDW's being the most common and stereotypical even with many nomad fleets slowly branching out into larger weapons for their armed forces.

The augmentations of these nomads intersect with humanity's but they prefer ethereal ones more frequently, sometimes for religious, spiritual, or occult reasons but primarily due to the fact that storing a supernatural matrix on your person is less bodily intrusive than cybernetics or additional organs. This isn't to say the latter are out of the question but due to their more particular biologies and often weaker immune systems, they are harder to make work. Regardless, they tend to take augmentations that boost their speed, perception, and reaction time, making them ghostlike and difficult to track on the field. Their ethereal powers only add to their mystique, specializing in stunning or disorienting enemies with flashbang like spells, momentarily overloading the foes in harmful ethereal waste byproducts, even possessing void-signature jammers that can make them vanish from scanners or flood them with faulty readings.

Offensive abilities usually come in the form of bursts of void-bolts or even outright explosive globs, typically summoning them within a large radius rather than directly from their bodies so they can attack from unexpected angles. They are particularly well known for using their short "jumps" into the abyssic plane where they can quickly absorb a large amount of ether around them and violently expel it when exiting, blowing apart even unztadtlige armour in some cases making them especially deadly when they flank into cramped areas.


Gealtirocht


Don't be fooled by their tribal nature; the gealtirocht were anything but primitive and if anything, were one of the first races to achieve interplanetary travel. In spite of being allies of the grotesque and brutish looking vrexul, these eel-folk look little alike beyond being nearly as tall. Gealtirocht armour is smooth and often lacking in edges, adding a bit more bulk to their appearance yet having an almost sculptured look in spite of the darker lines and a few choice angular sections. It's deceptively tough and tends to come with advanced movement capabilities, capable of boosting their sprinting speed and jumping heights to absurd levels. With this armour, some gealtirocht can catch up with speeding vehicles and others are capable of jumping high enough to grab onto low flying aircraft given how much it empowers their mighty digitigrade legs. That's not all their armour can do: cyber-ethereal ocular mounts link with their third eyes to give them some of the most advanced dual-system scanning capabilities of any soldier while their anti-grav booster packs, fast-regenerating armour-hugging shields, and hidden energy blades allow for them to be tenacious and always within range to attack.

Gealtirocht weapons are precise over long distances, prizing accuracy and piercing power almost like the the UCL's forces but focused moreso on concentrated lasers and hyper-accelerated rounds (utilizing reactions between chemical and energy sources to cause a round's extreme speed as opposed to gauss or rail systems from the League). It is to the extent that many regiments still do not even use automatic weapons as their primary firearms, preferring semi-automatic choices with a good deal of precise shot placement as well as frequent options to charge up their shots allowing them to pierce thicker armour and even threaten lighter vehicles with just baseline infantry. This isn't to say they are adverse to close quarters weapons or more bluntly destructive choices. Many of them have grown to respect the power of deadly close range hand-held energy weapons that can rapidly spray down targets with plasma globules while shoulder mounted missile pads let them rain sidewinding energy-warhead hell onto multiple targets or concentrate it onto tougher ones. They are also known for employing powerful lances with deadly disruptor blades, capable of ripping apart even fully armoured scielto, doubly so when void-charged.

Inside and outside of the Empire, the gealtirocht are known for being masters of blazing fast attacks. Few are as mobile as they are whether with vehicular support or not. They can be pinning down squads and blowing open the torsos of high value targets one minute before rapidly closing in with overwhelming fire from multiple angles the next. They coordinate with one another quite sharply to achieve multiple firing angles and aren't afraid to fly or simply leap through the air for precise snap-shots, near constantly putting on the pressure on targets from great ranges. This is assisted by a large group of dedicated etherealists, utilizing their powers to drown and flood hostiles with the heathen fury that has become their calling across the stars. Serpentine conjurations of eel-like power surge out of portals cast around them, smashing through hapless targets while those who scatter are blown apart by lances of light carrying concentrated shards of ether particles. If that is enough, they are not averse to summon dreadful otherworldly predators resembling either large horrific amphipods or ghost shrimps bristling with spines and razored claws or no less monstrous combinations of transparent, eldritch eel or shark like conjurations brought forth to ravage the enemies in a demonic rage.

Augmentations are moderately commonplace amongst them, growing in popularity with their friendship to the vrexul and the praolznevatz. Most of theirs are fairly plain by the standards of other races, preferring upgrades to strength, endurance, durability, and speed which has only made them even stronger. A number focus on finding ways to take their pagan mysticism and speirfhaire organs and unite them with the cutting edge in self-enhancement. This has resulted in a number of cutting edge half pagan half neo-occultist augmentations that allows them to create auras amongst themselves and friendly gealtirocht, improving their ethereal power and performance of their cranially-hidden eyes. They can also even use their speirfhaires to guide certain projectiles if given cybernetic targeting modules, something that also compliments bio-parasites that allow some to take once vestigial bony growths into launchable spikes, that if given certain retractable firearm like railings can slice right through a celaderaka's armour and pin them to a wall or floor. While the practice is frowned upon in some circles, others have been known to take specialized drug synthesizing augmentations that allow them to enter a heightened state of both aggression and concentration, capable of even affecting their ethereal capabilities and speirfhaire usage to be even more potent though there are concerns about its effects on their health.
 
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The Abyssic Plane

A fetid, reeking, and wet domain of unusually (semi) physical matter existing between realspace and the Chasm that mystifies ethereologists even to this today. It is believed that this almost mangrove swamp-like region of the beyond filters out the Chasm's excess energies, stopping it from overwhelming and devouring realspace. It is also known to serve as a habitat of creatures that at once seem more solid and developed than the Chasm yet are just as cryptic. Many of them have a similar general body shape but more seem to distantly resemble some sort of mutated serpentine fish sliding through the filth, lengthy combinations of centipede and mantis shrimp, eight winged ball-like creatures, enormous spiders disguising themselves as algae-ridden roots, and other such enormous and often disturbing and unpleasant.


It is comprised a large part of what seems to be something between heavily rotted flesh and mushy moistened mud though there are also areas overgrown with what tough, dense flora whose veins, leaves, and branches occasionally pulse with gibbering power. An often reddish or sometimes purple mist lightly shrouds the lightly reddish waters while the sky seems to be a sickly faded brown and white. In spite of how unpleasant it is, the Abyssic Plane is technically a less dangerous place than the Chasm. The organisms within are too caught up in their simple, primordial lives and the dense "ground" seems to easily absorb ether before sucking it deep below, filtering it back into the Oneiric Chasm. Qillatu seems to remain longer, capable of hovering in the air, but will often quickly attract creatures to feed if it becomes concentrated enough. Vegetation exposed to it appears to begin shuddering and whispering; research suggests it is essentially reflecting the radiation from the qillatu which manifests psycho-sonically as what at first seems to be whispered language but in reality, are air vibrations reacting against ether-exposed consciousnesses.


Some Chasm-dwelling creatures are known to enter the Plane, with many inhabiting it during their larval or juvenile stages, but it is not necessarily safer for them in spite of their power. Their natural etherealist abilities are partially muted by the Plane and those of its natural inhabitants are not to be scoffed at. The kind of ethereal power that derives from the Plane does have some overlap with that of the Chasm. It can be destructive and enhancing, but it tends to be more esoteric as well. It can cause those summoning it to seemingly blur in and out of view, making them appear to blink in and out of realspace. Gravity can be weakened in an area causing heavier objects to begin floating for short periods of time. Clouds of festering supernatural matter can be summoned out of it and launched at targets, erupting into a haze of psyche-overwhelming, qillatu generating miasma.


The very muck as well can be evoked then hardened to create solid barriers or even "filters" that break down ethereal spells into their raw underlying formulae and sub-reactions. With great skill, its eldritch life forms can even be summoned into the Chasm or realspace! These are only some examples of what one can do with the Plane's power. The main problem is that it is difficult to tap into it and those naturally able to do so while not unheard of are either rare or are struggling to fully develop their usage of it. The BCC has more of them than anyone else but their research on it is the most secretive part of their organization. Independent research groups have found ways to capture small amounts of the Plane's power to be used by etherealists but is a clunky, awkward process that is still undergoing much refinement. They typically require chipping and tagging Chasm-dwellers or the occasional abyssal organisms then attempting to track it and record the readings but this is a highly difficult process.


Much of the current research, including some leaked from the Black City Congomerate, suggests that the Plane is capable of "deciphering" and "deconstructing" ether. Its ability to filter it is potentially due to the fact that it may be a gigantic pile of semi-living void-matter that essentially both maintains and feeds upon the Chasm. Its true size is unknown but it must be potentially even larger if it can withstand and feed on it simultaneously. It is believed however breakthroughs in this field could revolutionize galactic society as we know it.
 
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Unified Celestial League

The current reigning hegemon, the UCL encompasses a number of systems and worlds roughly equal to the Yrrkradian Empire. Borne from an alliance between the now ancient and disbanded North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Firmalazia Izradia, its inception in 4204 was significant enough to cause NATO’s rival the Dolsilvec Foundation to integrate into the Yrrkradian Empire. The League was born from this merger and quickly grew with a policy of “exporting prosperity” and achieving change, power, and growth through diplomatic relations with other nations. For many, this was the beginning of an enlightened era of interplanetary relations emphasizing cooperation and mutual benefit.

The grim reality underlying these achievements however is not as straightforward as purely political channels or economic growth. Significant growth in resources, political capital, technology, and territory caused the UCL to become a powerful competitor on the galactic stage and one that viewed other hegemons not as enemies but as prey. Its soft power was backed up by powerful armadas and armies that benefitted from multiple generations of martial traditions. Policies that did cause growth and development in lesser worlds also caused notable adjustments to their structures of governance and activity often siphoning resources and manpower off-world. In the process of doing so, they fermented conflict and divisiveness across many worlds in their periphery and in the Helios Expanse.. In turn, this invited further intervention from their interstellar rivals and distrust from more skeptical nations untrusting of their message of progress and advancement as a grand divide was created across the stars.

During the Reckoning of Empires, they made massive forays into Arrkradian territory, mounting a massive offensive that would result in the loss of 50% of its holdings. Yet this was not without a massive cost as well, causing even sympathetic empires and organizations to view them with suspicions of being far more bloodthirsty than their progressive veneer would let on. The mass mobilization resulted in the loss of many of its elite military forces against combined Vrexul/Yrrkradian battalions and fleets while a series of high-risk counter-attacks scourged its outer colonies, resulting in some believing they were practically offered as willing sacrifices towards the Dominion’s brutal attempt to draw them away.

Unrest has been stirring in these now often neutral areas that bore the brunt of their advance. it is beginning to spread inwards especially in the wake of the vrexul uprisings, prompting questions of how well they actually treat these aliens as supposed members of the league whom they “uplifted” out of perceived squalor. The UCL should not be taken lightly however as their power still extends well outside of their own boundaries and are currently in the middle of attempting to prop up and secure new client states throughout what was once Yrrkradian territory space. Their military has learned much and is a far more dangerous beast than ever, with some believing it is simply waiting to crush the Empire when it shows enough weakness.

The UCL has been supports “Stabilizing Actor Forces” in conflict-ridden areas. These are armed groups whose views are seen as being in line with 41st-century values of sapient rights and expression. The identity of many of these groups can vary but it is known that they are highly coordinated and oftentimes formed quite rapidly, answering few questions from news media or government outlets. They had also moved military personnel near and possibly into these crisis-ridden regions often before territorial negotiations were announced though their explanation was that they had consulted with newly formed independent governments before having done so. A point of contention emerges when many of these independent governments are not recognized by others in the region or in some cases, certain League states. Some analysts suspect that they may be comprised of personally trained personnel not always native to a region when they are not from older regimes re-armed after making their allegiance to the League clear.

They are particularly hostile towards the Empire and Intranszjednota, seeing both as two different forms of authoritarian fanaticism. This is in spite of their growing prominence on junta-run celaderakan systems and recruitment programs integrating ex-Yrrkradian higher-ups into networks of regional allies with little oversight and much in the way of foreign backing. In spite of their frayed history with the BCC, hostilities against them have died down as of 4236. A growing number of Cities are beginning to work with the League, with many having pushed for joint control of certain areas of space once in the heart of the Expanse. While technically there is no official peace (and some areas between them are still contested), Conglomerate and League leadership can tolerate the contradiction in the interests of suppressing the rapid growth of pro-Intransigent sentiment as well as keeping old Yrrkradian ally states in check.

Their stated goal is the installment of new regimes that will respect the diverse cultures and species of the Helios Expanse while also helping to promote economic and political liberalization as net benefits not only to a planet but the surrounding system. A growing part of this development of less fortunate worlds is contracted out to various corporations and allied states, allowing them to cover more planets and have a wider range of specializations. Many states that these corporations have even less oversight than the official military forces. Much of the reporting on their actions often vanishes with the constant ever-unfolding drama of post-war power politics and new democratic leaders overthrowing older tyrannical regimes - a song and dance that has almost become tiresome across late-night TV newscasts but instrumental in cementing their presence in the region. They are currently in the midst of an inter-colonial dispute over a series of worlds settled by once-nomadic ships near Conglomerate-held space. These were claimed during the Expanse as worlds intended for development by recently ex-Yrrkradian incorporated industrialist groups. Voidhanger nomads in the region however claim that this is breaking treaties signed between them during the Reckoning in exchange for using the area as a staging ground.

The UCL is known for its distinctive silver, blue, and gold colours as well as their often chrome-like armour. Their weaponry is increasingly based on human designs with many of them utilizing electrochemical and magnetic acceleration methods of launching projectiles. They are noted for low recoil, strong accuracy, and large magazine size. Solid rounds tend to be “jacketed” in a cocoon of energy or sometimes even ethereal power to increase range, piercing power, and destructive potential. They are joined by a growing range of direct energy weapons with a love of high rate of fire energy bolts and short sustained beams noted for their precision and amour piercing capability. In some armies, they have even replaced solid round-based weapons due to their versatility of varying fire modes and how much they ease up logistics.

They have a number of melee weapons modeled after advanced combat knives, often able to vibrate at frequencies that grant extra armour-shredding or with a nano-sheath that increases durability, weight, and impact. They are well known for distinctive powered armour that networks with specialized under-suits (themselves a form of advanced Kevlar-like clothing) to enhance physical capabilities. The expenses of developing true powered armour have caused them to recently begin using new simpler suits that do not require as many augmentations or additional components (such as the under-suits or certain implants and biomods). In addition, their armour makes heavy usage of shield generators that can project themselves around the armour or “blanket” the armour.

Visual references can be seen here.



Yrrkradian Dominion

Once the primary hegemon, the Yrrkradian Dominion is a mere shadow of its former might with the loss of 50% of its territory. Once it was large enough that most of the Firmalazia Izradia and human-controlled territories could have fit within its boundaries. How it got there is a long and complicated process with much being lost in the annals of history and subsequently blurred between myth and fact. It is known that its origins were one of the exiled houses of the demonic-looking rocky-skinned aliens known as the Celaderaka settling on the planet of Chalgheol. It was the clan-house of Yrrkradia where adopted son Krasavan Tagak Tergalarkan had recently become the head after a brutal inter-clan war, leading to him ascending to a leadership position.

Rather than continue to fight, he would order a departure beyond their territories into Helios Expanse. This was far before mankind would venture beyond its own star system and before the scielto had even started their own empire. While their technology was just moderately advanced, it is not clear how they managed to initially progress so much faster than the scielto. Some theories state that it had to do with the strange ethereal phenomena that once frequently draped Chalgheol, visits from mysterious entities communing with its seemingly immortal emperor Krasavan, and ghostly migrations of Oneiric Chasm-borne creatures into its realspace as some sort of blessing. It was not long before multiple city-states became an empire spanning Chalgheol then many neighboring worlds. It was enough that it soon came into contact with scielto kingdoms with similar goals of imperial ambition. The wars between them lead to the ethereal beings forming the Firmalaza Izradia to combine their might, beginning a rivalry that still continues to this day.

Spurring on its growth was its ties to the Black City Conglomerate, then more of a trade association that happened to have a large private defence force known as the Carnazir. Initially due to conflict against the supernaturally powerful scielto, much of their trade was for the purpose of improving their defences against their foes’ ethereal mastery. Yet the Conglomerate itself was not averse to playing both sides of the conflict and an element of tension always remained between Krasavan and the Cities. He was initially supportive of humanity’s advent into intergalactic politics yet improving ties with the Dolsilvec Foundation hardened the Dominion’s stance against NATO. While it is well known what happened next, lesser known history is how Yrrkradia had radicalized anti-NATO and Firmalazia factions within the Conglomerate. They attempted to use their sympathizers and allies within the organization to spy on and potentially suppress NATO, if only due to the fact they knew a NATO-Firmament alliance was a definite possibility. This resulted in a worsening of its ties with the BCC leadership; they were able to tie anti-NATO/Firmament sentiment to Yrrkradian intelligence.

Krasavan would turn on the Conglomerate not too long after their then (tenuous) allies in the humanity and scielto would. Upon discovering the massive amount of proxy armies they possessed, Dominion leadership deemed them a threat to Yrrkradian interests as much as the UCL. The Reckoning of Empires would severely cripple their capabilities for years, not just with territory loss but how the rifts it created affect its contemporary politics. The Dominion is divided between loyalists to Emperor Tergalarkan and modernists who wish to fully complete the liberal-democratic reforms; up to and including removing him as a monarchic and executive head of state. Its territories are split between the two and various lesser factions caught between, still massive and powerful yet its control over its own forces and assets is less solid than it outwardly appears. Quiet wars within its boundaries, assassinations of politicians and generals, and parliamentary battles shifts its volatile internal power balance, making its enemies eye it with opportunistic hunger.

Since the Reckoning’s end, a partisan anti-Intranszjednota movement has begun picking up steam as of late, attempting to potentially make common ground with Conglomerate and League forces. Yet at the same time, BCC and Intransigent groups themselves have been shifting and manipulating its own worlds to their own ends, putting these plans on a slow crawl to fruition. Bipartisan elements of Yrrkradian leadership have pushed for mutual peace based on a common Intransigence and Conglomerate enemy yet similarly bipartisan elements view this as traitorous and viciously oppose it. This loyalist/modernist divide regardless has caused certain worlds to become more susceptible to Conglomerate and Intransigence influence as well, to the extent of official recognition towards non-capitalist/state-feudalist planets due to various populist and even revolutionary movements. To help expand and rebuild its former power, currently a great expansion program beyond its fringe borders is being undertaken, bringing with it a wave of colonization to distant worlds, far from the prying eyes of its enemies.

On paper, the Regime has a mighty set of allies throughout the stars. Many of them are militaries that were trained and supplied by them in their prime and if not, the non-government armed groups that recognize their governance are certainly just as concerning. The split in their governing body between pro and anti Krasavan factions extends to allies to the point that it can explode into devastating armed conflicts, sometimes prompting the other powers to “settle” the issues. Loyalists are attempting to reforge the governance of old and have a more traditionalist bent to their rule. Reformists on the other hand are more open-ended about their style of governance but lean towards establishing more democratic methods and fulfilling the attempted liberal-democratic reforms that were mirroring those of the Firmalazia. The proxy forces both employ are still widespread throughout the expanse, frequently fighting against those of other factions. Yet they are not often united themselves and can often become one another’s most dangerous foes. Recently many once insurgent armies been pushing towards solidifying themselves as legitimate governments or organizations, in turn assisted by increasingly Dominion friendly celaderakan juntas. This has prompted many to attempt to drive a wedge between them but results are yet to be seen.

The Dominion had an enigmatic experimental weaponry program powered by eldritch technology that never fully recovered from the Reckoning. In spite of their dire circumstances, more and more of this tech has been seen on the field next to older gear sometimes held up by patchwork repairs and cannibalized parts from their enemies. A substantial part of their arsenal consists of older issue material retrofitted and modified to be on part with mainline League weaponry, often featuring more conventional ballistics that has a higher magazine capacity and rate of fire but also far more easily modified components and functions. They also have more specialized ether-tech for altering the effects and functions of standard-issue weaponry as well. Their more high-end equipment appears capable of manipulating undercurrents of eldritch energy from the Abyssic Plain as opposed to the Oneiric Chasm. Much of this is believed to have resulted from research teams acquired from allied Black Cities. This results in them having the ability to easily jam enemy electronics, effectively resist ethereal capabilities, and in some cases even "warp'' large numbers of soldiers short distances among others albeit not with notable loading times between warpings.

Much of their standard armour tends to look dated in comparison to those the League uses and while not completely false, it tends to be lighter and allows for faster movement and easier modification. The more heavily laden, “tactical” appearance of their infantry with its more drab green, brown, and faded grey colour scheme reflects a force that is used to fighting with and without strong logistical support and wherein every soldier is meant to be incredibly prepared at all times to support themselves and their immediate squadmates. Their more high-tech armour isn’t as widely common and they tend to mix in powered with non or semi-powered armour infantry frequently. Said armour tends to have a sharper and at times semi-organic appearance, sometimes consisting of the almost rocky, craggy material normally seen on celaderakan combat armour (and carapaces). Much of this armour is considered as high-end if not more so than elite League equipment though it usually is not deployed in as large of quantities. Quite a bit of it includes some truly terrifying hand-to-hand weapons with a semi-ceremonial appearance - war scythes, lances, lengthy swords, and even what appear to be whips that radiate abyssic as opposed to traditionally ethereal power. It is not considered powerful enough to completely outclass conventional ethereal close-quarters weapons but that might be because they simply haven’t been as well developed.

Visual References can be found here.



Intranszjednota

An emergent regional power from the Helios Expanse, the Intranszjednota or Intransigence dates back to the period of strife before the advent of humanity in the region. While it did not necessarily exist as a concrete organization until around 4207 at its earliest, it had many predecessors. The most recent was the Outers Sphere Liberation Front formed in 4155, a loose alliance of those opposed to the other three great powers. It was large enough that it was considered too risky to directly attack, especially during a time of mass anti-war sentiment, shaky economic foundations, and increasing dissatisfaction with political leadership across the Great Powers. It was not until the Dolsilvec Foundation and NATO emerged to assist in systematically dismantling it via subterfuge, manipulation, astroturfing political dissident movements, and select usage of “humanitarian” intervention that it was brought under heel and rendered obsolete.

While it also fell a large part due to its internal conflicts and lack of stronger principles behind its anti-imperial enmity, it unified many important revolutionary philosophers, soldiers, militant groups, and a handful of worlds. When the OSLF was rendered a non-threat during by the Helios Subjugation, these networks in the most tightly guarded systems spread outwards. They took advantage of the violence, unrest, and vicious exploitation hoisted upon the Expanse. Past a certain point, their messaging and spread was effective enough new allies were simply exporting its ideology without any active involvement. The Conglomerate were the only ones genuinely wise to the threat but their poor standing with the two larger empires meant even the ears of intelligence agencies wrote them off as attempting to manipulate them. They would attempt to suppress their growth with counter-insurgency and covert deep space operations but these proved deeply unsuccessful due to the Intransigence already having had amassed a great deal of both allies and military power. When it did emerge on the galactic stage in the Reckoning of Empires, it quickly demonstrated itself to be much, much deadlier than the OSLF ever was.

The Intranszjednota allies in the region rival the Black City Conglomerate in terms of proxy militant forces, making it larger in this field than the League. Many of them are from “abandoned” states and colonies, a few even including quite a few military deserters or defectors. This results in them being referred to either derogatorily or charmingly as “debris divisions”. Their level of armament varies wildly but a growing number are receiving higher levels of strategic and tactical level training. This coincides with more advanced, up to date weaponry and becoming closer politically to their backers. Many formally join the Intranszjednot, functioning with the same degree of coordination and ingenuity as professionally trained armies They are primarily involved in more defensive conflicts and somewhat less secretive than most militias, allowing them a wider media presence on top of often being excellent at holding territories and forcing opponents to wear themselves out before meticulous offensives. Quite a few of them have larger numbers of vrexul and gealtirocht nomad fleets involved, giving them surprising sturdiness and making them very difficult to uproot when they get entrenched in an area.

The Intransigence’s standing military exists somewhere between the lighter and more modular, easily maintained armour of the Arkradian Empire and the heavier duty toughness of the Unified Celestial League. Much of it is full-body covering and does provide a degree of augmentation but it is relatively lighter than the UCL’s while having more augmentative properties than those of the Empire’s. A lot of it is meant to synchronize with biological, cybernetic, and even ethereal augmentations which on average are at their most common in the Intranszjednota. This is to the extent a lot of the armour has hidden biomass components or even is made of specialized vrexul or tarrhaidim derived semi-biological biomatter allowing for a great degree of adaptability on the field with specialized mutagenic implants and mechanisms. Some of their armour even grants additional limbs or can act as an additional layer of skin. Their red, black, and green armour is known for having striking eye-like sections (though it is not a 100% unique feature for them) and a predatory, imposing appearance.

Intranszjednota weaponry is typically known for being fairly high caliber and possess impressive stopping power and armour piercing capability, something that extends to their energy weapons. This is likely due to the influence of the Vrexul who emphasize impressive individual firepower for every soldier. This influence also includes an incredibly wide range of additional munition types and firing modes for their weapons. The most common of these are armour piercing explosive rounds but rounds with plasma cells, electrical charges, biological fragmentation spines, and even fragments of ethereal power populate their armories. Some of these can even be fired from biomechanical platforms that integrate into the user, their armour, or both although in most cases these strange weapons tend to have a shorter range in exchange for a higher rate of fire. Their energy weapons are not often as precise as the League or as intended for long-range but have more destructive power and often are capable of charging up for devastating, explosive shots. Their melee weaponry frequently comes from various tribes and nomadic groups enhanced with cutting-edge composite metals, sometimes infused into living, shifting biological components. They use disruptor fields and energy sheaths to massively increase the damage they are capable of with some aliens capable of using these to combat armoured vehicles in ambushes. They are known for having a variety of martial arts that are intended for those wearing performance-enhancing armour.

Visual References can be found here.



Black City Conglomerate

A mysterious and old starfaring organization, the Black City Conglomerate are at least as old as the Yrrkradian Empire and about as mysterious in origins. Some claim they came from outside of the Helios Expanse, others believe they splintered off from various pre Firmalazia scielto kingdoms, and their leadership has little interest in providing a concrete answer to this matter. What is known is that they were major trading partners and industrial powerhouses in the Expanse for as long as anyone can remember. It is partially due to them that the Firmalazia Izradia and NATO as well as the Dolsilvec Foundation and Yrrkradian Dominion grew as they did. Yet in spite of their apparent mercantile roots, they have alway sought to expand their influence out of sight of the monarchies and imperiums that surrounded them.

To this end, they possessed advanced robotics and ethereal-cybernetic technology as both a valuable trade resource and a way to expand their power. Many of their holdings were more of financial and economic alliances with various smaller systems allied with the great powers or whichever neutral ones were out there. Yet in secrecy, they would frequently filter into, manipulate, and influence various levels of planetary to systems-level governance. All of this political infrastructure was partially to assist in mediating between the great powers and the human ones to come, often in the interest of peace insofar as it meant higher profits and greater entrance into or expansion of new markets.

Granted, their capability to broker peace was sorely tested by the increasing stubbornness of the Firmalzia Izradia and Yrrkradian Dominion towards warmongering. Populist political factions in both also began to suspect them of arming the enemy or brokering deals to cut either hegemon out of potential growth and profits. Humanity’s advent in the region and their immediate attempts to establish economic AND political ties did not help this. While they would formally select NATO as an ally, this alliance was fraught with distrust. The Dolsilvec Foundation was considered too reckless and while NATO demonstrated itself competent and cunning, it also regarded the Conglomerate as a potential competitor as it became aware of its secretive operations and vast holdings. The Conglomerate itself would go out of its way to block NATO’s attempts at expansion but in retaliation, NATO would turn on and even militarily attack the Conglomerate at the tail end of the Helios Subjugation, revealing its secret armies and expanding influence to its enemies.

Yet in spite of having been distanced from its superpower allies, it was far from crippled and transitioned rapidly to a more overt form of hard power. This was enough so that during the Subjugation, it arguably had the most growth economically, politically, and militarily as it rapidly cemented its hold on various areas of economic and geographical importance. It also kept a much closer eye on the OSLF and the Intransigence that emerged from it, almost eliminating the latter in its infancy while having absorbed many of the former’s more corporate or otherwise “ideologically flexible” elements into its ranks. They were the first to aggressively oppose the Intransigence in the Reckoning of Empires, even going so far as to attempt to form an alliance yet again with elements of the League navy to do so. Yet one should remember that they are also a very, very broad faction. The titular cities, massive sometimes planet-sized space stations, frequently act independently of the central machine consciousness AI gestalts that run the Conglomerate.

As such, in spite of its vast holdings and the fact that it has a massive amount of space stations and other such “floating” territories, it can at times be highly nebulous. It is not uncommon for the Black Cities themselves to face frequent revolts and upheavals when they are not threatening to defect to another faction. With technological parity quickly being achieved by its rivals, the Conglomerate is acting more aggressively as of late. Key to its current actions are the amassing of many voidhanger allies as well as competing with the Intranszjednota on acquiring praolznevatz and untztadlige bergaverbande allies. Its success is growing moreso in the latter category due to the vrexul and praolznvatz’s shared lineage. While it remains vigilant towards the Intransigence, it is aware that a growing number of its own are seeing them as a more reliable faction. This is something it violent suppresses when possible, even if it may occasionally work alongside the revolutionaries to contest League and Empire control. It is however engaged in a game of hide and seek as both attempt to suss out one another’s hidden outposts and proxy forces. Yet this time it is the Empire and League taking advantage of the fallout of such, relying on this shadow war to calculate their next moves in the more contested areas between the two.

The Conglomerate’s armed wing is known as the Carnazir though it has become prominent enough to sometimes be seen as the face of the faction. Due to its age, it has a great deal of military experience not just from its own forces but those absorbed from empires shattered by the Firmalazia Izradia and Dominion. A great deal of these are of lesser known alien species, long since reduced to living on its holdings or within its Black Cities. Many of them are known for their aggressive, rapid attacks now made even deadlier with the arcane cyber-ethereal technology of the Conglomerate. This massive shock force specializes in rapid deployments and overwhelming force in short bursts, being among the most mobile on the ground. Alongside this, many mercenaries and incorporated pirate fleets further bolster its numbers, often employing or even absorbing the deadliest assets from other empires into its own ranks. Many human corporations as well have integrated themselves into it post-Reckoning, giving it an impressively wide industrial and material base to work with, making it the most diverse military in the Expanse. The Carnazir is semi-centrally controlled, its power filtered through various executive-generals and sapient automata-processor computers, dividing it amongst the black cities who themselves contribute a portion of their own forces to it. In spite of these controls, factionalism is a standard part of its functioning and often a necessity with so many competing political and corporate interests at work.

Carnazir weaponry, armor, and gear varies wildly from older retrofitted pre-human alien models proven in action to cutting edge ethereotech implementations easily the equal of any other hegemon. Quite a bit of it is intended for the myriad number of lesser known alien species that comprise it and frequently varies in terms of quality. Generally the closer a carnazir force is to the influence of BCC leadership, the more up to date and standardized its loadouts will be. In spite of this, the majority of their infantry are quite tough and often carrying a variety of additional weaponry on their bodies or integrated into them. Regulations can be loose even at a more official level but what is more uniform is a heavy presence of energy type weaponry, much of it with additional firing modes. Etherealism-compatible weaponry and gear is outright standard in some military groups, leading to otherwise mundane Carnazir forces capable of sudden supernaturally buffing augmentations or terrifyingly effective void-touched salvos. Their armor tends to be very easy to modify even if it on average is somewhat weaker than the Intranszjednota and League’s, moreso due to its dated nature than poor construction. However it can often be easily modified for a variety of tasks from anti-ethereal hardening to stealth loadouts to having additional mounts for attached weaponry. Recently a lot of their firearms have gained the function to “solidify” their energy discharges to launch them like bullets though they do not entirely act like conventional hard projectiles (ie. capable of dissipating and “splashing” into nebulous blasts on impact), further increasing their adaptive versatility.

Visual references can be found here.