I'm making a thread about The Astral Empire, my faction, and a link inside will direct you here. Here it is: http://community.playstarboundrp.com/threads/the-empire.2291/#post-24178 The idea behind this Faction AND Colony is to finally make a really immoral & evil colony and faction that has power and importance, thus creating interesting plots involing factions and colonies more often, instead of just people. I've seen people planning for one but nothing ever happened, I'm glad to see Firedrinker went places and has now a faction that installs a cold war feeling, but I'm pushing something that has a bitter taste and that will upset most people. Luminaria, protected by the faction The Empire, is this utopia that embody King's dream. Supposedly, it's a perfect society in which people work towards the improvement of all, of course, no such things exist. The improvement of all races, for King, goes through science, philosophy, the modification of our bodies and such, everything that you could put into the knowledge and science category. Of course, it's a giant metropolis in which the poors are enslaved to work for a chosen elite, an elite that's decided through meritocracy or their initial wealth. King considers that those who "have made it", I.E. are rich, safe, or have made it out of a meaningless lifestyle, are worthy of being part of his elite. That elite are part of the rich districts of Luminaria, and obviously, the poors all live beneath the wealthy, in slums. King thinks it's a logical system, because if personal worth is determined by willpower and resolve, then anyone who overthrows King is part of that logical loop, and was more worthy to be part of the elite than him, who couldn't maintain his power over whom he calls "lowlives". King thinks a society where everyone is wealthy cannot exists, and sees his society as moral because he gives poor people a great purpose: working for the wealth of the elites, making the elite comfortable, so the elite can work on the direct improvement of all the races, as it is one of the Astral Empire goals. The poor indirectly works for the improvement of all races. But here's the actual drifts, other than the obvious carefree attitude towards poor people: -The Astral Empire enslaves people. King commissioned researches on cybernetics to Apex scientists, and has come up with a way to build an army and labour force. The Astral Empire snatches, forcefully enroll, and trick people into joining their programs that they set up in slums, where they kill abduct children using miniknog abduction, and robotize and empty adult bodies to make shells for the enslaved kid's brains. -The Astral Empire seizes resources selfishly and will conquer colonies. It'll conquer independent colonies that are under no protectorate and that aren't powerful enough to fight back, and use its people as it sees fit. Of course, not player-owned colonies, as long as nothing is discussed OOCly, do not worry about it being all godmoddy. I don't want to impose it as a leading faction, I just want to create interesting plots. -The Astral Empire conducts immoral experiments on people to improve medecine. Probably more things will appear on the list as it goes on, while they will morally justify everything they do, they won't respect most things. If people want to make characters to take part of this, I'll gladly accept anyone, even if they want to RP someone from the slums of Luminaria, but I'd like, for a moment, the characters that join, not to be potential traitors. I'm not imposing anything, it's just, for this to work, I'd be thankful if you didn't join just to try and murder the High Council. In the same regard, all the information here is unknown to most, The Astral Empire presents itself as good-willed, since its members are definitely convinced they are. (Admitedly, it's not that hard to find out) I'd like it if, for the sake of roleplaying, we were not constantly attacked in neutral territories by white knight heroes characters. Luminaria is bound to be destroyed on the long term, as The Astral Empire will probably go overboard and bring a lot of enemies upon itself, but I'd like this to last at least a few months. We can also plan here the kind of interaction you want to have with that faction, wether you own a colony, or you feel like your character should have a strong interaction with it.
This is a great idea. It would give protectorates like USCM something to do with their pitiful lives (I kid, I kid), and add a more prevalent antagonistic side to the galaxy instead of random Floran killing random people and stupid little drama queens causing a ruckus. Perhaps I could make a character to be some morally ill scientist working for this if it ever comes into play. +1
Protectorates = colonies USSEC (united systems security) has pledged to safe guard USCM = United Systems Colonial Marines, branch of USAF (united systems armed forces) that takes orders from USSEC USSEC = branch of government that oversees all military and judiciary involvement, takes orders from the council Just for future clarification. This looks neat. You got a lot of competition right now in terms of new factions, so if you want to get into the ring you're gonna have to really recruit like a mad man. Rule of thumb for galaxy chat ads is 15-20 minutes. That way you aren't spamming so long as the message is small.
I've started rallying people already, and most people from DarkStar who are morally questionable are joining. This might work well. Attacking protectorates is definitely not a priority though, that's foolish. These kinda things won't happen until a while, and will be planned out OOCly with a lot of attention to detail!
I'm looking at the faction forum and I don't see a single one, let alone a colony. It seems like the evil factions you're talking about are too disorganized to matter to anyone.
USCM, DarkStar, Tallest Tree, Avalon off the top of my head. Anyway, there are evil factions out there that don't use faction forums because they haven't been granted one in fear of players complaining about evil-driven conflict.
Are you just naming colonies that don't like Sen or is there some kind of massive illuminati conspiracy bringing all these together to conquer the universe
The USCM broadcast propaganda painting them as the ultimate force of good, but all they do in actuality is offer protection to colonies in exchange for payment. Avalon literally conceal murders and murder scenes to protect their image, and don't really care about the mindless killing on their streets. They created a law enforcement faction, but don't actually have any laws. Tallest Tree: slavery. Enough said. DarkStar, I do not know too much about their IC activities, but from what I understand OOC they are an evil mercenary faction who care more about profit than lives.
That doesn't make any of these evil...? They're not flawless, but you're basically portraying 2 armies offering protection to whole planets for money as evil, a city that can't contain its crime because of incompetence as evil, and a warriorish culture as evil. Meanwhile, they welcome most people, allow them into their ranks, and are not hostile to contact with most other colonies. Talk about evil. Tallest tree is the only one of these that makes some sort of sense, although Firedrinker kept trying to make it friendlier to outsiders, before the Aiko fuck up.
I was going off information when the Freezer was still around; I was told by pretty much everyone on the Prior that the USCM gave out protectorate status in exchange for food, because the Freezer was not self-sufficient. Supply and demand, no? This proposed faction just looks like an attempt to be as offensive as possible to as many parties as possible. That's not evil, that's a joke. You don't have to eat babies to be evil, you just need to be immoral and lack empathy. Lets face it, most of the characters on this server are evil: they don't care how many bystanders get maimed in their personal quest for glory or status or whatever. I just had a character approach mine on behalf of Tallest Tree, and say to his face, that he didn't care if a bar full of innocent people got blown up as long as he got his way (of killing Sen). This happens pretty much on a daily basis.
I was planning to go this way with Darkstar anyway, when me and Aleiksei were discussing some things a few days back, it all perfectly fitted together. The whole merc / private military contractors thing was nothing more than a stepping stone for me.
