Immaculate NES II: Emperor of the Fading Heavens (pre-NES thread)

[Ekolite]

You know, Kol, I do feel kinda bad that my Sidar apparently failed in their determination to help the Syrii.

Well this is just speculation on my part but I would assume that the Soul War was the eventual war between the League and the Coalition (and 3Nats?). My interpretation is that the Bannor went and settled their grudge with the Syrii, and then that was perhaps the final straw in a chain of events leading up to the war. So at that point Sidar and friends landed on Edsunland and the war began.

I think any war between us (although actually unlikely in the game itself) would have probably been sparked by Bannor aggression, with the other alternative being a CCCC attack on Edsunland following the Zombie Crisis. However, you probably weren't in any position to take advantage of that at the time, and some of your members would have probably been more preoccupied with attacking the Corbus.
So I assumed Bannor aggression to be the cause.

That being said, the CCCC did apparently have long-long-long term plans to attack Edsunland (I remember seeing and amusing diagram ) so who knows what would have happened.

--

The League discussed the eventual creation of ships enchanted with shadow mana (my mana type) to be used in a possible sneak attack. I would assume these would have been developed and used in the attack on the Syrii. We'd have arrived before you'd even caught wind of it with any luck. Besides, Immac said that the Syrii were the target of organised genocide, so I was just filling in some details.

/ramble

 

[Ekolite]

q-q-q-q-QUESTION! You mention in the main thread that all the current species of the universe are distinct species and not capable of interbreeding; is that a new development, a blatant but well-enforced Churchly lie, or judicious retconning?

I thought Ember was half and half actually, although I could be wrong there. I would guess retconning.

 

[thomas.berubeg]

I was going to assume Church lies.

 

[Darksaber1]

Hmm, if one hasn't come up, I could do a Guild, or Church faction if one is desired. I don't have time tonight, but could post a History/Information tomorrow.

Immy, if theres any particular Guild you whan't, PM, I'm not picky.

 

[orangelex44]

I have a little different thought on the Soul Wars, actually. The Sidar's plans were to leave the Coalition ASAP, and any action of the sort would probably have been a very nice catalyst for League interference. Interference begat invasion, invasion begat more invasions, and we all know the rest. My basic theory is that the Sidar and Syrii were caught in the middle (if you remember the geography), with no allies on either major side. They probably sold themselves well - note the lovely term of "Soul War", and draw whatever conclusions you like to my old people's main methodolgy - but the end was inevitable. The Sidar had a place to escape to; the Syrii did not.

The Corbus, noticably absent from any discussion, were probably also a side-note genocide on the Coalition part as the Syrii were for the League. Considering the Three Nations, they were certainly powerful enough to escape the same immediate fate of the Syrii or Corbus. Or at least, they had been before the Kappan exodus; losing an integral and powerful member of their alliance might have left them in a similar spot as the Sidar or Syrii.

Who won? That's not a trivial question, but given the seeming influence and existance of the Halluichirp it's certain that at the very least some of the Coalition survived. On the other hand, the Church's presence implies a Bannor heredity as well; my bet says the final outcome was a loser's draw. Lots of dead people, probable destruction of some of the League/Coalition member states, and a mostly complete (if apparently temporary) draining of the means of magick. Perhaps the Three Nations did manage to sit the fight out, and negotiated the peace. If so, they did a piss-poor job of it, since I see no real influence from their constituants in this new world.

EDIT: and yeah, I had a little fun with those diagrams. Sad, that they weren't ever used and probably never would be.

 

[Immaculate]

I don't know what retconning means.

But yeah, its blatant moderator heavy-handedness. story-wise, lets say its because all those that could breed with humans have over the years and their genes got swallowed up over the years to make 99% human, 1% everything else.

Darksaber- play what you WANT to play. there's lots of stuff you could do... if you want to be a guild you could be a transport guild and try to prevent the houses from getting ships. Or you could provide some service like cosmetic surgery. or complex electronics.

 

[orangelex44]

"retcon: shortened version of retroactive continuity, defined as the deliberate changing of previously established facts in a work of serial fiction." That's a semi-direct quite from Wikipedia.

How about this question, then - is there any real, non-cosmetic way to distinguish from elves and humans? I mean, if it's just the ears, modern-day plastic surgery could alter those.

EDIT: and your silence on the whole 'Soul War' thing is disturbingly loud, Immac.

 

[Immaculate]

yeah- i am purposefully not going to discuss events prior to year 0 too much.

elves are genetically destinguishable from humans (you can stain for histones/DNA and count chromosomes). they have different protein profiles (antigenicly different- detectable by immunoblotting). Their eyes are morphologically distinct not only in the way they are shaped but in the way the iris is made up. an excised eye is also distinct- the retinal pigments are completely different. the skeleton is smaller, slighter and the the marrow is less dense. muscle tissue contains more mitochondria per cell (but other tissues do not). they possess more brown adipose tissue (even as adults) which results in higher metabolic rater and a higher body core temperature. that was a fun excerise.

 

[Immaculate]

Orange, can you edit your entry in the main thread to indicate your fiefdoms (like you included here)


Everyone else:
your entries in the main thread should include:
-description/history of your house/sect/guild
-your fiefdoms (city names, location. means of supporting themselves- fishing, farming, commercial enterprise of some sort)
-families, divisions within your sect, shareholder coalitions (whatever you want to do to give depth and character to your faction)
-characters (indicate which characters you will be using to issue orders with and what sort of personalities/ character traits they have- try to be somewhat balanced about this- if he is an administrative genious then maybe he fears combat and freezes up when faced with ordering soldiers around?)
-assets (military and non-military)

and make it your ONLY post in that thread- so you should all have ONE post in the main thread prior to us opening up the game and i should be able to find ALL of your relevent information in one convenient to find location. feel free to edit as required.

Thanks- this is hopefully going to make organization and set up easier.

EDIT: the main thread should include everything that is public knowledge. IF and ONLY IF you have additional secret information then e-mail it to me at philgob (at) hotmail (dot) com so that i can keep it on record Temporary questions and detailing temporary issues should be done by PM. Again, this is so that i can find everything in one convenient to find place later on.

Also, if there is any WW1 or WW2 tech junkies out there, i could use some help in allocating your basic military assets. How big an an early horse and early oil-based army could 3-5 million people living in a feudal system support in a fairly militaristic society? 200-400K soldiers? does that sound right? less? more? What sort of early military assets make sense? Mostly steam-based navies? What about a small flotilla of destroyers or something? a U-Boat or two? What about planes? Prop planes obviously but a few jets? mostly infantry, maybe some horse-mounted infantry, APCs? track-vehicles? what about AA?

 

[Immaculate]

Actually, lets just keep it to WW1 era weapons. its actually more advanced... and plenty colorful.

check out:

its goes 4mph!

sneaky sneaky!

turning the tide.

anyway... yeah, i think it fits best with the low-tech of the serfs and will make your high-tech assets that much more impressive.

So i guess war is mostly a trench-warfare thing- which also seems appropriate given the scale of things.

 

[orangelex44]

Ja, mein Kapitän!

Have done. I'll try to PM something on my characters tonight or tomorrow.


As for the army question, a cursory check on Google says that roughly a fifth of the population of Germany was in the army (or dead) by the end of WWI. Now, that's in wartime; before the war, the number was closer to three percent. Without an actual war to motivate, though, I'd say five percent is a good value for the military-minded. During war, a feudal system is sloppy; let's say that twelve percent is the maximum. For five million people, that's a peacetime strength of 250K, and a wartime one of 600K. Do whatever rounding you like - the short of it is that yes, 200-400K aren't bad numbers.

I PM'd a bit about suggested weaponry (because I didn't know about this post), but it's really your call. At the very least, you can obviously have infantry with decent machine guns and grenades; automatic rifles and submachine guns are a bit more iffy, but honestly, they don't make a *huge* difference either way so I'll ignore that point. Artillery is basically the same in both wars; AA was basically just shanghai'd artillery anyway, just with neat shells.

The tricky bits are the planes, trains, and automobiles. As I said in the PM, I think it might be appropriate to just nix the internal-combustion engine entirely. It would fix a lot of problems determining exact weaponry standards, and give a nice place to draw the line on acceptable tech. That would mean steam ships (actually not terrible, if slow), no tanks, trucks, or planes (none of which were really used to start WWI anyway), and lots of dependence on rail and pony.

 

[Kyzarc Fotjage]

hows this for weapons?

Standard weapons:
Rifle: breech loading, single shot, Accurate. Iron sights
Sniper rifle: Single shot. Very accurate. Scope
Bayonets: not very useful
Helmets: stop head injuries.
Grenades: fragmentation. sometimes fail. unreliable. BOOOOOOM!!!!!!!
Gas masks: helps counter gas

Artillery:
Machine gun: High rate of fire. Bulky, requires three-man team. expensive. requires much ammunition. highly inaccurate
Mortar: longe ranged. Large squad needed. more accurate with each shot. <45* angle. Can shell trenches effectively.
Howitzer: standard field artillery. >45* angle. medium squad required. can counter infantry charges highly effectively.

Vehicles (optional):
Biplane: no armor, light machine gun, very smashable
Tank: heavy armor, fast, powerful, awesome. Expensive

Navy (optional):
U-boats. undetectable by most means, fast, smashable, deadly
Battleship: big, heavily armored, heavy artillery
Destroyer: small, fast, decent artillery
Transports: easily smashable, vulnerable, lightly armed, carries many peoples

Special
Gas: released from cannisters or fired from artillery. deadly vs unprotected infantry. Highly poisonous. Wind can drive gas back at the user.
Flamethrower: can drive men from trenches. Volatile and the fuel tank will explode if shot.
Bazooka: can counter tanks, unlike anything else

 

[orangelex44]

Here's another thought, though: I think your population estimates are way low, Immac. You said that Errovus has a population of ~2 billion, for a planet that's not considered particularly crowded. Now, I'll be extremely generous here, and say that's one of the very highest planet populations - let's say the average for the six planets we have available is only half a billion. That still makes the total population three billion, and by that math, to be considered a "major house" means you have to control about a thousandth of that. What?

What might be more reasonable? Well, using the Sceptre distribution as relative percentages, and completely disregarding the two populated but non-player planets, we get:
Major Houses: 40% of 3 billion ~= 1.2 billion
Minor Houses: 33% " " ~= .97 billion
Church: 14% " " ~= .4 billion
Guilds: 14% " " ~= .4 billion

And splitting the Major Houses into five, I come up with ~240 million apiece. If you want to be comparable to the European nations in WWI, Germany was about 70 million, France was 40, Britain 45, Italy 35, and Russia a healthy 175 million. I don't know if that's the kind of comparision you're aiming for, but I think the general point is made: 5 million is almost absurdly low, in my opinion. Remember, I'm starting with a really low value for planetary population, and completely ignoring two planets as influential in the Sceptre distribution.

 

[Seon]

okay. Editing those/reposting soon.

 

[Ekolite]

I have a little different thought on the Soul Wars, actually. The Sidar's plans were to leave the Coalition ASAP, and any action of the sort would probably have been a very nice catalyst for League interference. Interference begat invasion, invasion begat more invasions, and we all know the rest. My basic theory is that the Sidar and Syrii were caught in the middle (if you remember the geography), with no allies on either major side. They probably sold themselves well - note the lovely term of "Soul War", and draw whatever conclusions you like to my old people's main methodolgy - but the end was inevitable. The Sidar had a place to escape to; the Syrii did not.

The Corbus, noticably absent from any discussion, were probably also a side-note genocide on the Coalition part as the Syrii were for the League. Considering the Three Nations, they were certainly powerful enough to escape the same immediate fate of the Syrii or Corbus. Or at least, they had been before the Kappan exodus; losing an integral and powerful member of their alliance might have left them in a similar spot as the Sidar or Syrii.

Who won? That's not a trivial question, but given the seeming influence and existance of the Halluichirp it's certain that at the very least some of the Coalition survived. On the other hand, the Church's presence implies a Bannor heredity as well; my bet says the final outcome was a loser's draw. Lots of dead people, probable destruction of some of the League/Coalition member states, and a mostly complete (if apparently temporary) draining of the means of magick. Perhaps the Three Nations did manage to sit the fight out, and negotiated the peace. If so, they did a piss-poor job of it, since I see no real influence from their constituants in this new world.

EDIT: and yeah, I had a little fun with those diagrams. Sad, that they weren't ever used and probably never would be.

That's possible, but I don't understand why you would have voluntarilly left the Coalition at a time when you would need all the allies you could get. The Coaltion would have probably attacked you immediately and almost certainly destroyed you.

If the Kappa left before the Soul Wars, the 3Nats would have been crippled. The Kappa were the most powerful nation on Edsunland, and had their swampy and difficult to attack home to boot. The League probably had the largest and most experienced army in the world, even with the Kappa around, and we would have had no problem cleaning up once they'd left.

If the Kappa left before you abandoned the Coalition the League would have been more interested in 3Nats then you guys.

I'd never viewed the Kuriotates as much more then future Bannor territory.

 

[Immaculate]

your points regarding population are very impressive Orange; thanks for your thoughts on the issue. Let me think more about where 'base' level tech is.

 

[orangelex44]

Oh, I never said it was a reasonable thing to do, Kol, I just said it was in my plans. Sometimes you have to sacrifice logic for a the story!

As for the population thing, well, I don't have as clear a picture of the exact situation of things as you probably do, Immac. For instance, I wasn't sure if there was a substancial 'independent' group of people, or if the church or guilds had substantial presences away from their planets. Are their fiefs dedicated to the Regency? What *are* the exact populations of the planets? There are a lot of considerations.

 

[Ekolite]

Yeah, I was wondering that. Are there independent fiefs scattered around as well the ones controlled by the players, and the ones attributed to the Government positions?

 

[Darksaber1]

House Kraiah Tradeing guild

Summary:

Spoiler :

“House” Kraiah Trading is not a house in the traditional sense of the ruling house, but mainly uses the title in order to claim themselves as a “family business”; technically true, but then so are so are many mafia.

Kraiah Trading claims to be the descendants of human and gnomish trading partners of Corbus, who worked with this mysteries race on the eve of the Soul Wars. Kraiah Trading has long been a minor, but potent, player among the multitudes of Leagueheim, but have recently become much more notable. 50 years ago, Kraiah Trading began a fad that lasts even to this day, the rave popularity of “Pet Rocks-Locally grown!”, which proved so popular that Kraiah Trading could purchase several bulk freighters, and so move up in power.

Kraiah Trading specializes in moving and selling-they are a potent player in the inter-stellar transport industry, as well as the trade of consumer products, particularly luxury goods.

Location:

Spoiler :

A mid-sized compound on northern hemisphere of Leugueheim, and “An Office on Every World!”, plus some distribution centres.

People:

Spoiler :

The current head of Kraiah Trading is Seraed Aekraiah, the oldest surviving daughter of Arnim Aekraiah, the former Head, with surviving being the key part. She had 4 older siblings, all of whom died under unusual conditions, however nothing was ever proven.

Yorik Shaykraiah; head of the main cadet branch of House Kraiah, an personal aid to Seraed

Giron Verol: Head of the “Gnome Branch” of Kraiah Trading

Preliminary data for my Guild Faction.

 

[Tyrs]

Kol:Oddly enough I never though of the Kuiotates as much more than Sheaim territory...

About the population bit, remember that there are two whole worlds that are entirely city. I would imagine that those would have the highest populations.