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Loxley
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The Consortium Wars
Background on the Setting
Background on the Setting
I. THE CHARON CONSORTIUM
At the dawn of the second millennium, the year 2000, Earth was attacked by an alien species. The war was a bloody and merciless conflict, but the aliens, remembered today only as the Ancients, had underestimated humanity. They were fought to a standstill. The losses on both sides were terrible, so terrible that the Ancients, faced with the same extinction they had planned to wreak on humanity, abandoned their efforts to wage war on our species, and fled into the dark recesses of space.
But humanity paid a far greater price. Besides our near extinction, we lost our home. Devastated by nuclear fire, our homeworld, Earth, was made uninhabitable, a smoldering lump of radioactive waste. And so we left. Known as the Terran Exodus, the effort to leave Earth was a gargantuan task. A fleet of millions of spaceships left Earth to find a new homeworld for ourselves, and rebuild.
We found our homeworld in the solar system known as Charon. Located in a dangerous region of the Milky Way known as the Tartarus Nova, it was a fiery world of meteor fields and black holes, a virtual maze of death and destruction, impossible to penetrate. And in the depth of this Tartarus, we found a solar system perfect for our needs. We found our new Earth. Terraforming created for us not one but nine inhabitable planets.
And then, we rebuilt our strength and numbers.
Humanity would never again be pushed to the brink of extinction. This was the promise our leaders gave us. And we rebuilt. And rebuilt. And we built. Humanity, under the banner of the Charon Consortium, became a military superpower rivaled by few.
We know there are other alien races out there. The Ishtar of the Core Worlds lead this super government these races call the Asimov Dependency. The elf races of the Perfect Rim are their allies. There are others too, possibly hundreds. We do not know. We have little contact with them, as our government does not trust aliens. Few of us do.
With one exception. Our brothers, the Elohim, whose warrior society rivals our own in strength, are our greatest allies. They share with us the history of near-extinction, an ancient war they call the Strife. We have found common ground with them. Our militaries operate effectively together on the Reach, where no other aliens dare tread.
They are the only aliens we can ever trust.
II. THE CONSORTIUM DEFENSE FORCES (CDF)
A. The Consortium Navy
The Consortium Navy is the naval branch of the CDF. They are the largest of the different wings of the CDF, due to the fact that both the Marines and the various other parts of the CDF military establishment, relies on the Consortium Navy for intergalactic transportation.
Their fleets - and they currently field roughly 70 fleets in different parts of Consortium space and sphere of interest, can field everything from light attack crafts and frigates and corvettes up to kilometer long destroyers with enough firepower to obliterate small worlds. They also field ships designed entirely for electronic warfare and intelligence gathering, which travel on the edge of the Reach, and near alien space to conduct signal intelligence operations.
B. The Consortium Marines
The fighting force of the Consortium military, the Consortium Marines, officially designated the Charon Consortium Marine Corps or CCMC, are the ground forces of the Consortium. The marines provide combat operations in all terrains, both planetary and zero gravity. Each marine undergoes bootcamp training at one of fifty different locations in and around the Charon System, for six months, followed by three months of intensive professional training, before deployment onboard a ship.
B1. The Select Marines
The Select Marines are the special operations forces of the Consortium Marines. Only experienced marines are considered for entry into the Select Marines, where they have the option to undergo voluntary gene therapy to enhance their capabilities as soldiers. Select Marines are highly respected, and operate in small numbers only; each ship, regardless of size, never has more than a platoon of Select Marines onboard, though every ship has at least two, to provide special operations capability.
C. "The Chimurenga"
Few command such respect in the Consortium military as those few who once served in the ranks of the Chimurenga, during the Guinamese Civil War. While the organization is today long since dissolved, and mostly forgotten about in the civilian and political world of the Consortium, the military has not forgotten, nor will it ever.
The Guinam Civil War, fought approximately thirty years ago on the colonial world of Guinam, was a notoriously bloody conflict. An estimated million lives were lost due to the oppressive regime of the Guinamese Falangists. The Consortium funded rebel groups to undermine the rule of the authoritarian colonial regime, but none received such tremendous support as the rebel group known as the Chimurenga.
The Chimurenga was created by Consortium Intelligence agents as an extension of its will, an elite fighting force trained and equipped by the CDF. Its success in the war was tremendous, and it became greatly known for its operations alongside CDF special operations forces. When the war ended, a lot of former members of the Chimurenga instead of a life in peace chose to join the Consortium Defense Forces, where their military expertise and training were greatly valued, as shown by the fact that to this day, former members of the unit are allowed the special concession of wearing their grey, circular Chimurenga unit patch on CDF uniforms, signifying them as former members of the distinguished unit.
III. ALIEN RACES
I'm itching for roleplay, and after some consideration, I've decided I want to do a military science fiction epos in the vein of Mass Effect. I have some plot ideas from past plotting I was hoping to use, but I would like us all to throw around some ideas and see what we can come up with.
Basically, my past plotting tells the story of a humanity that was almost annihilated during an ancient war with an equally ancient alien species, of which nothing is any longer remembered. Humanity however fought these aliens to a standstill. Both races faced extinction, and both races chose retreat instead. The enemy disappeared into the darkest recesses of space never (so far...) to be seen again. Humanity, Earth destroyed, was forced to seek out a new homeworld and rebuild. They found the Charon System, hidden in a remote region of space accessible only through a narrow passage known as the Helios Passage. The system was fortified, and humanity, never again to face the threat of extinction, became a military superpower of the galaxy. In time, they made contact with other alien species, but their xenophobia, hostility and suspicion kept them isolated.
That's the basic situation of humanity. Basically, there are very few alien species that can match humanity's military might, simply because none of them has ever faced the threat of extinction like humanity has. Think of it as a huge, human-wide Sparta.
I'm thinking plotwise we'll do the Mass Effect thing and build up to the return of the ancient alien species that once almost destroyed humanity. Cue war. Everything else is up in the air.
What do you guys think?
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