Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

[Shroom Man 777]

I've run this by Siege and by Vic so I'm putting this in the thread now for your perusal and discussion (and eventually much later, procrastinated entry into the list), because these guys are relevant to The Bounty, the Goroks and thus by extension the Sajit.

Traumfanger:

A psychovore race bearing a pseudo-embryonic mammalian appearance (inspired when I looked at destructionator's Random Ideas thread when I pitched an idea for an Alien Oppressor occupying Earth and folks suggested that the aliens look disarmingly adorable and fuzzy to subvert alien invader appearance tropes). They exist in a limbo-plane between realspace and the psychosphere, the frequency-realm of dreams and psionics. They also subsist on the psionic emanations of thinking things, beings with psychic potentials. They use ectoplasm not only for nourishment but also for materials with which to construct their realms - abstract structures they dwell in, situated in the boundaries between thoughtscape and realspace.

The Traumfangers are pretty much divided into two groups (I am sure more sub-societies exist, but yeah). The first believing in having sustainable civilizations and discouraging the rampant devouring of prey, so they pretty much parasite a host species, invisibly integrating themselves as the secret rulers of a civilization, whose populations serve as food sources as they go about their daily lives. Instead of sucking individuals dry, they let these large masses live and jut sift from their collective subconsciousnesses using vast invisible structures erected in the dreamscape all around the hosts. It would be like The Matrix, except the people don't need to be enclosed in womb-pods... their whole worlds have parasite-apparatuses concealed here and tere. The consequences for the hosts are perhaps shortening of lifespans, douring of imaginations, monotone-ing of culture, but since it's billions of hosts for a few million or thousand Traumfangers, it's sustainable and healthy.

The second Traumfangers don't believe in this namby pamby sustainable bullshit and just eat whatever they want. Understandably, they don't get very far and since they don't know shit about "agriculture," they eat all their prey and starve to death or are discovered and killed or run off.

It's like the dichotomy between the Smart Insidious Hidden Vampire CEOs who've lived and manipulated since ancient times, and the asshole raver psycho dumbshit serial killing young vampires who don't get very far.

So the Traumfangers WON'T have backstory involved with Rhapsodites. They came after the Rhapsodites, during the Apexai Golden Age when the Zedath-Kalesh and the other Apexai Houses were spreading across the galaxy and showing everyone how cool they are. The Traumfangers originally came from somewhere around the Bounty/Savanna region, though not on Samtic or Myrranni space. They subjugated and parasited from whatever races were there during those days.

Then they found a modest start-up Apexai colony, one made by honest Apexai folks who wanted a new start, without the warsaucers or the crystal palaces or dimensional halls and shit. These folksky greyoids were naive campers and were unequipped for the Traumfangers... and the parasites were able to subsist on the abnormally enormous psionic potentials of these unassuming organisms. It super-charged the Traumfanger civilization and allowed them to grow to unprecedented levels.

Until the mainstream Apexai society found out and they don't like the idea of some of their people becoming food-fuel for the expansion of an anathemic dream-thought-sucking race. So what they did was infect the Traumfangers with a DREAM VIRUS, a THOUGHT PATHOGEN emitted by a modified Oversoul Pylon monolith they tossed at the Traumfanger-controlled region. The captured Apexai, and other host-lifeforms, started channeling the patterns which proved toxic to the Traumfangers and killed a whole lot of them and suppressed them for eons.

But then the Bragulans destroyed ancient Apexaia, the damage to the old Oversoul network and the regulatory-control systems centered on the Apexai homeworld also deactivated the virus-transmitting Pylon. So the Traumfangers were able to regrow and regenerate for the last few centuries, relatively recent times by galactic standards.

And now they have a whole buffet table arrayed before them. Currently I think the militaristic, expansionistic GOROK PHALANGES might be a host-species for the Traums, who've infiltrated and constructed their old parasite-apparatuses around the Gorok homeworlds. The fascist leaders of the Goroks might be in cahoots or something.

NOTE: The name Traumfanger is German for dreamcatcher, maybe the name was given by the ancient explorer Victoria Krieg, who narrowly escaped having her mind eaten by the Traumfangers.

Source of attached Traumfanger image, a "realistic" take on Mewtwo and Mew.

[Shroom Man 777]

Revised technotheos!

Apostles of the Divine Calibration - Occult technotheocrats who believe in the deterministic nature of the universe and regard the inherent chaos of humanity as an obstacle to its transcendence - to its ultimate calibration with reality’s divine order. The first Apostles were engineers, scientists and military-industrial complex leaders who sought to give humanity an evolutionary advantage but in their pursuit of truth, they transformed their very beings into the most precise instruments they could craft and lost most of their humanity in the process. In modern times, they strive to make mankind conform to their calculations while opposing heresies such as the regressive cultures of post-Fracture states, the degeneracy of seemingly progressive posthuman states, irrational alien menaces and psionics - which they regard as the chaotic anathema that laid humanity low during the Reignfall. Their armed enforcers are called the Rectifiers, and they draw from those formerly of the NEUROM who escaped the Ministry of Fate’s purges. They use aspiring, power-hungry regimes as proxies and clients, equipping them with bleeding edge technologies in exchange for their service in advancing the Apostle’s goals - beginning with the end of those holding humanity back from its true psychohistoric potential.

Also, attached... potential realignment of the Cascade and the Green Sea (and enlargement and alteration of the VOID of dead-space surrounding the east of Myrran space)... for your approvals, commentations and corrections:

[Invictus]

Apostles of the Divine Calibration - Occult technotheocrats who believe in the deterministic nature of the universe and regard the inherent chaos of humanity as an obstacle to its transcendence - to its ultimate calibration with reality’s divine order. The first Apostles were engineers, scientists and military-industrial complex leaders who sought to give humanity an evolutionary advantage but in their pursuit of truth, they transformed their very beings into the most precise instruments they could craft and lost most of their humanity in the process. In modern times, they strive to make mankind conform to their calculations while opposing heresies such as the regressive cultures of post-Fracture states, the degeneracy of seemingly progressive posthuman states, irrational alien menaces and psionics - which they regard as the chaotic anathema that laid humanity low during the Reignfall. Their armed enforcers are called the Rectifiers, and they draw from those formerly of the NEUROM who escaped the Ministry of Fate’s purges. They use aspiring, power-hungry regimes as proxies and clients, equipping them with bleeding edge technologies in exchange for their service in advancing the Apostle’s goals - beginning with the end of those holding humanity back from its true psychohistoric potential.

I've been badgering Shroom over this for the last few days because I don't think it quite works. My distaste of wholesale ripping from Comix aside, (where it was a thinly-disguised rip from 40K anyway) I don't think the Fracture benefits from having a pan-faction of shadowy mad scientists whose power readily eclipses the Meridian Institute by the mere virtue of being more proactive. I think it's more useful to see these dudes as the embodiment of a religion or an ideology, part and parcel of the atmosphere of the Fracture.

Sure, the first proponents of Calibrationism might indeed have been rogue Meridian researchers and renegade NEUROM warlords, but by no means do they need to have survived up to this day, secretly directing the overall movements to their ends. Nor does it seem particularly healthy for the Meridian Institute's cred to have them to lose a constant stream of renegades to the dark side and that somehow the Apostles of the Divine Calibration exists as some institutional dark opposite - the net good they provide would pale in comparison if their mere existence is somehow sustaining a bunch of guys who occasionally overturn societies for massive damage. But it's enough that the ideas of the movement have entered the Fracture's memesphere at large, and every now and then people and societies pick up the idea and start changing for the worse.

I propose that Calibrationism should be a meme, and indeed a meme that suggests that the Fracture can be understood in terms of memes, quantifiable and modifiable with mechanical means. This isn't a controversial idea to the Meridian Institute (or indeed to the Ministry or the Magi, or anyone who wishes to do social engineering in the Fracture), considering that they pioneered all the tools and theories for doing this. The Meridian Institute would also agree with the Calibrationist tenet that humanity is currently stuck in a psychohistorical quagmire that fosters unnatural conservatism and strange unconscious archetypes. But while the scienticians of the Institute seeks to thoroughly understand the phenomenon of the Fracture before doing anything about it, Calibrationists think technology (of whatever branch or paradigm that the current proponent is expert in) holds the key to advancing humanity out of the mess, and that the time to start doing this is right away.

I'm sure there are a lot of variations on this. The problem with being a movement with such a wide reach is that it starts splintering. The Magi and the Ministry hold together only because of oversight from their weakly godlike founders; Calibrationism lacks a similar godhead, and has fallen apart. Somewhere in a reasonably cosmopolitan polity, a mystery cult takes hold among the wealthy and sophisticated and secretive technopriests start initiating recruits, promising that at the highest levels their practices (and headtubes) would "clear" their minds from irrationality and invisible psychic miasma and thus guarantee success in life - that's Calibrationism. None of these cultists need to ever have contacted some rogue Meridian. On some remote colony world, a technologically advanced army seizes control and starts processing the population into Cybermen - that's Calibrationism. They reconcile defending humanity with de-humanizing all the people in their charge by seeing themselves as a Leninist vanguard who must build a crusade big enough to free all of humanity, which means to drag societies kicking and screaming to the light if they have to. Maybe they see some machine-god archetype in humanity's collective unconscious and are trying to bring it forth. Maybe they have formulated some radically different definition of "humanity". Nova Meropia - that's Calibrationism too, and not some uniquely stable mutation thereof - Calibrationism shouldn't be limited to being mad science al-Qaeda.

Calibrationists may hate the Ministry of Fate above all - if they're even aware of the Ministry, if they're descended from the first renegade NEUROMans who still mythologize the rational utopia they almost managed to build, if they're none of the above but simply want to foster an ideology capable of fighting off other influences.

And I think at least the general idea of Calibrationism - that of technological accelerationism bettering society - can succeed, if it wasn't taking place in the Fracture. People subconsciously don't react well. It inherently disrupts political balances of power. The massive subaltern population of Robots get involved - as fetishized idols or prototypes for a new humanity free of sin - along with all the baggage they carry with them. Necessarily radical efforts to alter society create massive fallout. The context catches up with the ideals and it again ends up as an explosion of rampant killborgs.

[Siege]

I dig Invictus' take. I also think that the tenets of Calibrationism have a presence in the Meridian Institute, much as it might be trying to root it out. It might start with stuffy scientists who just try to build bigger and better rayguns, who then slowly start wondering about the ways they could use those rayguns to make things right in the Fracture, and start muttering about it to trusted colleagues, who recruit like-minded folks into their Think Tanks where they polish their slide rules and grouse about the damn hidebound conservatives on the Hill who are too damn stuck in their ways, too scared to get their hands dirty, too afraid to make the Hard Choices For The Good Of Humanity.

Let such groups fester for a while and they'll inevitably turn into memetic cells, trying to coax the Institute into proactivity and intervention. It can take the form of Space Kissingers dropping napalm on Planet Cambodia, or Space Oswalds trying to assassinate the Dean-Provost because he's clearly a damn Samtic sympathizer, or Space Oliver North smuggling rayguns to NEUROM because at least NEUROM has the will to outright try and blow up Grand Auriga instead of appeasing it endlessly. But whatever the form, it's essentially Calibrationism -- that is, in their case, a desire to remake the galaxy into something better through unscrupulous means fueled by rampant paranoia.

[Shroom Man 777]

I am liking this new take on the Calibration as a movement that's reacting to the indignities, conservatism, regressiveness and repressiveness of the Fracture. Whereas the Meridian guys had the benefit of being founded on a cushy safe planet and thus developed their safe, neutral moderate approaches... perhaps when Calibrationism manifests on oppressive worlds and societies where say Grand Aurigans restricted transhumanism to noble bloodlines, or where Magi or Ministry influenced ruling classes gave disproportionate favor to espers or at least gave the perception of ESPERIST CONSPIRACY RULERS, or wherever techno-progressiveness was stymied really badly, then the resulting wave Calibrationism becomes very violent, very insurgent, a built up, pent up anti-thesis.

Sort of like how the angriest atheists, the Hitchens, the Dawkins, and the SDNers came forth as a reaction to the oppressions they faced in their conservative societies.

I don't mean Al-Qaeda or ISIS in the sense of just a COBRA-esque terror organization being evil, but as a violent uprising/social movement that the desperate folks suffering indignities and injustices have decided to embrace as a solution to the repression of the Fracture. In a normal society, transhumanism would evolve organically and relatively non-violently and benignly, which is what the Meridians may wish to do... but they have to be delicate because it is the Fracture. Because it is the Fracture, the Calibration - without the Meridians' delibrate pace - manifests it more violently and desperately as a survival mechanism to the attacks the established powers throw at them.

I guess my proposed AQ/ISIS/Hezbollah strain of Calibrationism works if it is under heavy assault from the established Fracture powers - if a Calibrationist society gains the ire, or seeks to escape the domination, of Grand Auriga/NEUROM/militant Magi/Cascadians/Laurentians and ends up being bombed and invaded, then of course the Apostles will start being terroristic cybernetic organisms.

If as Vic said in his post, Calibrationism occurs in a cosmopolitan society that's not being besieged or crushed, then the cult would infiltrate the ruling elite like how extremism is all the rage with the elites of Saudi Arabia or Iran, though they're not going all COBRA, all assymetric terror group, the fad would spread in the high circles, perhaps if the leadership is in on it, their conventional forces (social, economic, military, etc.) would be used in pro-Calibrationist ways, while perhaps they support distant efforts, perhaps the insurgent rebels and such manifesting in embattled worlds.

How extreme or moderate Calibrationism manifests would depend on how crushed the populations are. How bad the local conditions are, the Fracture-caused injustices, etc.

[Siege]

A bunch of random ideas. I really dig the more abstract ideas in this thread, but at the same time find that I do better if I'm simultaneously angling for a practical implementation. This is an attempt to put a few of those implementations down on paper. Unfortunately I haven't had much of a social life for the last couple of weeks and it looks like this situation will persist for a few weeks more, so this isn't growing as quickly as I'd like. So I figured I'd post them, not in the least place because I have no real idea of for example any Samtics to include.

The Coronet Expanse
A coreward group of Wild Space nebulae and relatively young stars anchored around a belt of a red giants in the process of shedding their outer layers into space. The Coronet Expanse is just slightly too far away from anywhere important and thus widely regarded as strategically trivial. As a result it has attracted quite a number of the sort of people who would if at all possible prefer to avoid the unpleasantry commonly associated with warfleets, planetary bombardment and war in general.


Character Ideas
The Rani of Black Roses, a Myrranni conquistador who maintains a tenuous grip on the outlying world of Eventide with only a handful of house troops. She actually prefers to be left alone with her poems, but for the privilege of being mostly alone she is paradoxically forced into neverending petty power plays with rivals who want to take her stuff.

The Keyholder, an ancient Kerberos that acts as the Rani's advisor for unclear and no doubt enigmatic reasons. It manifests most typically as a football-sized floating golden orb, but there are hints that it is much, -much- larger, just most of it is submerged in other dimensions.

Marshal Reni Sciascia, the Sovereignty's premier (and only) lawgiver in the Coronet expanse. It's a part time job, so she runs a side business selling (real and fake) Apexai artefacts and other space oddities. The money is spent in equal amounts on her shuttle and on expensive cigars imported from the Trucial Stars.

Dnzyw Berka, commissar last class of the Bragulan Star Empire. Most of his troops were killed years ago when their dropship crashed into a small moon. Berka engineered that crash because he knew Bragulan troops frequently frag their commissars. Content to be alive and in a relatively peaceful backwater, Berka’s biggest challenge now is to carefully balance the heroism he makes up for his reports so that his superiors in the commissariat are impressed, but not impressed enough to actually send him reinforcements.

Tyfereth, retired Rhapsodist SEER turned wandering dilettante space ronin with crazy hair. The deadliest swordsman in the expanse bar none; he once cut a laserbeam in two. His current goal in life seems to be to gain an audience with the Rani and recite his poetry to her.

Wonviffy, an old and possibly slightly senile Apexai engineer. His life mission is to single-handedly nurse an old crashed wardisc back to operational life. He shares his race’s disdain for the galaxy’s lesser species, but being forced to rely on them for decades as the sole remaining Apexai in the expanse has instilled him a patience and tolerance unusual for his kind.

Hiragana Enjerikku, an eternally young-appearing Magi. In reality Hiragana spent over a hundred years as a member of a long range reconnaissance patrol unit fighting a series of protracted Wild Space jungle wars against Shepherd and Laurentian League forces. Irreparably psychologically damaged by a century of war and atrocities, Hiragana spends most of her time in seclusion in a Zigonian monastery on the jungle moon Aestrov.

Okar Arikan, a wily Orthi enterpreneur who makes a living selling out to and then doublecrossing powers as diverse as the Karlack Swarm, Cevaucian synthcartels and the Ministry of Fate. Arikan has the uncanny ability to extricate himself from his deals while the getting’s still good, typically making off a second or two before the shooting starts to escape in the chaos.

Trade Magnate Madora, an erstwhile Meridian scholar turned unscrupulous profiteer. Madora operates out of the desert world of Tel Dor in the name of a distant master called the Gilded Mikado Aphik-Keramin. It is yet uncertain what the space nomads of the Tel Hanaton trade fleet intend to do in this galactic neighborhood (beyond acquiring as many rare earth minerals as possible), but from Madora’s demeanor it is plenty clear he will not be satisfied merely trading - if it were up to him, he would turn Tel Dor and its surroundings from a trade post into a colony.

Proveician Morgenstone, the Tertiary Comptroller of the Société Marchand auf Aktien Comercial (SOMAC), is Madora’s primary competitor. Equally rich, equally well-connected and equally ruthless, she is a match for the trade magnate in every sense of the word and arguably the main force keeping Tel Hanaton in check. SOMAC is the largest interstellar mercantile trade and transshipment syndicate in Wild Space, a venerable commercial institution that predates the Sovereignty by several centuries at the least and which claims - although these claims are somewhat insubstantial - that it was founded during the Earthreign. CEID suspects that both Morgenstone and Madora and their respective trade syndicates are pawns in the labyrinthine games of the Raptured Lords.

Worlds
Eventide, a quiet world whose modest population is mostly centered in the habitable regions surrounding the narrow equatorial freshwater oceans. First settled by humans in the post-Fracture days, the relatively low-tech population is now under the thumb of the Myrran Rani of Black Roses and her House Guard. She rules from the peak of the White Palace and is for all intents and purposes remarkably light-handed for a Myrran conquistador.

Tel Dor, a dusty planet in an erratic orbit through a binary system. Known throughout the Expanse as a hive of scum and villainy, it is a world where life is cheap and money can buy you anything. It is controlled by the Tel Hanaton trade fleet, an armada of lighthugger treasure ships spread through the Expanse and ruled by a race of insectoids often called Doodlebugs by humans - a name that belies their frighteningly voracious nature in combat.

Aksion & Eclion, twin oversized and overbuilt space platforms straddling a strategic hyperspace nexus through the Expanse. The only place that can boast of a semi-regular Sovereignty presence in the entire Expanse, it is the main hub for lawful USS activity in the region - if you can call the dilapidated office of Marshal Sciascia and the once in a blue moon appearance of a Strikestar in transit 'a hub'. In reality the platforms are controlled by SOMAC, which essentially controls all economic affairs across the subsector.

Frionus Once upon a time during the early post-Earthreign days Frionus used to be a lush and tropical world, one of the richest in the sector, a 'gold coast' in space where the newly liberated planetary elites dallied and danced in elaborate villas and estates. But then the climate changed, Frionus entered an ice age, and now the world is home to great frozen hive cities caught in the ice. Amidst its ruins lies at least one Apexai wardisc, crashed here during its escape from Byzon's genocide of the Apexai race.

Aestrov , one of three habitable moons orbiting a purple gas giant. Covered in jungle, its impenetrable rainforests are home to ancient pre-Earthreign and prehuman temples that maybe date to before Titanfall. From one of these trap-riddled temples did Tyfereth retrieve his venerable quantum sword - a probability-altering weapon that strikes at multiple possible angles at the same time.

Phaeton Taphus, a strange world home to a machine ecology that appears to fully cover its stony crust. Upon closer inspection however it turns out that crust is simply the result of many millennia of asteroid impacts, and Phaeton Taphus in reality is machinery all the way down. No-one now knows who built this world or why - not even the Apexai.

Night Worlds, a series of blistered, lifeless rocks, the remnants of some great world-shattering prehuman war between at least three long-gone alien races. The Night Worlds are a graveyard of planets, surrounded by the wrecks of ruined warships and the shattered shells of comet-cities. Many of these are home to automated defense systems that still linger even many thousands of years after the end of whatever war raged here, making them highly lethal to any wannabe explorers.

[Shroom Man 777]

I approve of this, though since its 3AM I cannot add much but yes. I do like this approach, as a natural extension, crystallization, of the abstract stuff we're doing. Since it's meant to graduate into setting-details for actual stories and such. So this EXPANSE, and like Vic's RAYE RUNNER, are yeah, the TRUE FORM of our mad workings.

BTW, Speaker, any more stuff on the Sajit? They'll be vital for the Bounty/Savanna.

[Invictus]

Seconding Shroom's comments, though slightly miffed that you went straight for the magical girl Zakalwe stereotype for the local Magi representative. :<

As for how Samtics can turn up in Wild Space, you can have nomaid Khelerene mercenaries belonging to an unaffiliated kith, Daur space whale truckers passing through, or even an intelligent symbiote who lives inside an unsuspecting host and who possibly has some secretive agenda. Yet another option would be to go with something like this:

Warr-Rajet, a renegade Samtic collective inhabiting the body of a terrible void kraken. In its quest for self-sufficiency, the erratic creature scatters automated miners, semi-functional defense platforms and caches of valuable refined materials around its vague and contradictory territorial claims, which irritates the shipping concerns of the Cluster to no end. Though its badly-maintained and radiation-rusted body is no match for a proper warship if it came to a fight, no greater power has considered it worth it to do so.

Shroom and I also discussed that another of the few ways Myrrans can develop personal bonds if to go on thrill-kill hunts together on distant worlds all Predator-style. In that vein, there's this:

The Moon-Drinker Knight, a Myrranni armiger nominally aligned with the Rani of Black Roses. With access to his personal hypercutter, an armory of exotic weapons and a cloaking device, he makes up a non-trivial portion of the Rani's military strength. His prominence stems from a predisposition for aggressive risk-taking that a landholder could ill afford, and those who understand Myrranni affairs peg him to try for an usurpation or even a secure consortship soon; but no, he's really just an excitable spree-killer with the smarts to have someone more administratively inclined set his list of targets.

[Shroom Man 777]

Fuck, I had a long ass draft detailing the Prefecture. Then ugh it got deleted. This is like the first time this has ever happened to me. Ugh ugh ugh. Fuck fuck fuck. I am a sad hippo. Ugh.

[Shroom Man 777]

Inspired by a healthy serving of The Metabarons, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, the Gladiatores, Man-Law and Phaeton the Wanderer from Comix, the naked manly Elysians from SDNW4, and Ford’s The Logical World and his transhumanist/singularity beliefs and love for anime (though affectionately, most lovingly parodied ), and of course Pai Mei from the Kill Bill films and those old Shaw Brothers kung fu flicks.

THE PREFECTURE
A race and polity of transhumans who deem themselves to be ultimate life forms, located “beneath” the Fracture and causing no small amount of anxiety, xeno-, techno- and all other forms of phobias amongst their less advanced northern neighbours. Such is the extent of their sophistication and development that their enhancements are nigh indistinguishable from their anatomies (Vic’s idea!). Their very beings are even capable of manipulating hyperspace itself (!) – though not to the point of enabling FTL travel (only the most powerful of Prefects, such as the Chairman who leads their polity), nonetheless hyperfield ripple energy manipulation enables an individual Prefect to perform insane feats. (Consequently, somehow someway the Prefects are incapable of psionics and null to it.)

The Prefecture itself is an isolated state, access is difficult, to say the least, for those who wish to enter it must prove their worthiness by TESTING THEIR MORTALITY and proving their MIGHT! In contests, in feats and in competitions against the gatekeeper Prefects. Most often in the form of KUNG FU BATTLES TO THE DEATH. Those with unworthy genomes are not permitted to enter.

To further fuel fears of this mysterious polity, most of the known universe have witnessed very few Prefects emerge from the borders of their territories. And the majority of these Prefects are exceedingly powerful individuals, at least equivalent to apex Solarian FORCE Marines, or a Galbadia Garden full of Shen-Rhap SEERs, or a pentomic squad of Emerald Guard CyBrags. Astride vessels of sleek appearance and relatively small sizes, but with firepower comparable to Solarian Dreadstars, Bragulan war-stations, and other superheavy hitters. These guys hit way BEYOND their weight class. And the few of these guys who do emerge to deal with the rest of the galaxy almost always do so by challenging the cosmos, all comers and what have you, to outrageous feats and contests! To test their own vaunted posthuman supremacy, the victory itself is their prize, the satisfaction, the glory! If defeated, then their own carcasses – filled with obscene technological treasures – will be all the reward any foe can ask for. As well as the reputation! And even the recognition required to enter the Prefecture itself and take the place of the vanquished champion.

A Prefect could lay waste to a whole warfleet, land in some two-bit space nation’s capital, his or her face plastered all over the galactic newsreels screaming megalomaniac challenges. Or through psychohistorical predictions, a Prefect could hide underground some dustball, hibernating as a dormant PILLAR MAN, before awakening when the time is right, when the leylines of history have converged so that the world he is entombed in has become some kind of interstellar hotspot, a point of interest, the place for an epic climax which the Prefect champion will barge into. Wandering Prefects could appear and intervene in worlds in peril, or in worlds needing a good ass-beating, saving lives, vanquishing conquerors, or themselves arriving like some cosmic disaster. Punching Karlack hordes in the face, repulsing Bragulan invasions, causing chaos and disorder and depopulating whole unsuspecting peaceful space systems and sparking horrible wars. All that, a Prefect can do in pursuit of... their inscrutable pursuits!

See, the Prefects in pursuit of perfection dedicate their whole lives to attaining a state of sublime ability, talent, grace and skill at their respective fields of passion. The most commonly seen in the galaxy are the warrior-champion-adventurers, because naturally the warrior-champion-adventurers are the loudest ones who go around breaking things and blowing stuff up. There are many other Prefects who pursue more peaceable arts, scholars, artists, musicians, sculptors who turn entire asteroid fields into galleries of portrait-sculptures carved from space rocks, sushi chefs who murder whole space-herds of Karlack herbivores to create the finest dishes, whatever. They follow a future post-humanized insane version of that Japanese philosophy of being damn good in a given art or field or line of work, single-mindedly, religiously. This fits into their posthumanity, the further enhancement and evolution of their kind, the refinement of their superior GENOME!

Their habitats are immersed almost entirely in hyperspace. Siege suggests, awesomely, that there are worlds filled with baseline creatures in Prefect space. Some dedicate their entire existence to chronicling the Prefects’ achievements, following them around and all that, while being protected from harm by their beneviolent benefactors. Others dedicate their entire planetary or interstellar economies to FESTIVUS whenever Prefects decide to grace these populaces of MORTALS. Man, imagine that, an entire world filled with millions of beings, spending their whole time just getting ready for the revelry and SPECTACLES that would occur when a Prefect decides to visit. There would be vast segments of the population that would RUN FOR THEIR LIVES whenever this happens, though. Since by any measure of sense, a visit from a Prefect – much less a group of them – would count as a complete catastrophe for bystanders.


In some respects, these guys due to their madness and posthumanity have attained a state of almighty divine douchebaggery similar to the Greek Gods of old. They could probably intervene to ruin the shit out of people they don’t like (as long as they won’t get killed doing so, since even they have limits), or some can send VALKYRIES or something to save and abduct WORTHY SPECIMENS whose feats are commendable and whose seeds can be added to their GENOME.

The Prefecture itself is loosely connected. Each noble family or bloodline or whatever jealously guards their secrets, their sacred GENOME of superiority, there are competitions and contests, hierarchy is determined by feats, only the Pai Mei CHAIRMAN is undisputed – such is his ability that he has EYEBEAMS that can shoot down warvessels AND bad ideas

Their abilities and such are also enhanced and propagated through ritualized reproduction so they literally can’t mass produce their greatnesses. Sure they can launch a meta-bunker or a meta-fighter or a meta-warships, or even a few of this, to blow up a cosmic-level threat, maybe, but this isn’t something they can do willy nilly. They probably don’t even talk to each other that much.

There could have been previous attempts by the Prefects at expansion and colonization. They enter the Fracture and select an unsuspecting world to be given the glory and honor of being enhanced into ULTIMATE LIFE FORMS. They subjugate the world and begin a campaign of eugenics to breed the most perfect people – they don’t kill, but they have ridiculous contests and only allow the worthy to breed. The unworthy are castigated and exiled or something. They are douches but they aren’t that abhorrent. Still, it’s terrible. Within a few generations, they do produce people of incredible abilities, but the original population of millions would be reduced to like a few dozen people. It’s regarded as a failure by everyone, the Prefects themselves realize that it’s dumb, while the rest of the galaxy consider them to be madmen, space madmen conquerors like MOGAR from Comix. And yeah, the whole Fracture probably loses their shit whenever a Prefect appears. The Solarians also think they’re loons.

As to their origins as an Olympian pantheon existing in their own plane of existence in hyperspace (reminiscent of the Myrranni Celestial Courts... except perhaps worse because the feline Celestials don’t give a crap about their peasants, while the Prefects do like to bother people for shits and giggles and inadvertently cause calamities when they do). I was thinking that they were perhaps one of the contemporaries, or even predecessors of the Earthreign and when the Earthreign expanded and brutalized human and aliens alike, subjugating the former and eradicating the latter, the proto-Prefects could have been composed of those who resisted them. So they are just as old as the Earthreign, they fought the Earthreign, but they didn’t collapse like the Earthreign, so they had a headstart over everyone – even the USS – and so that’s why by the modern era, they’re so ridiculously advanced (and ridiculously insane!).

Siege had an awesomer idea that works with this and is not mutually exclusive and we’ll go with it also! The Prefect did co-exist with the Earthreign in a sense, because its founders were EARTH-KNIGHTS. The metahuman badasses that formed the warrior elite of the Reign’s expansionistic imperialistic... imperialism/expansion. They would make the posthuman bloodlines that would found Grand Auriga-Avancore look like spoiled provincial fringe worlders with hand-me-down genomes handed down to them by Earth Central. The Earth-Knights did a heel-face turn because, Siege suggests, that they encountered a certain wandering Lizard King of Zigon who showed them the ways of compassion, the error of their violence, the virtues of mercy. Perhaps they tried to strike down the Lizard King with their closed fist, but their assault was halted by an open hand! An open palm, perhaps bearing a peach fruit, that stunned them with its graciousness! Its generosity! They were ashamed and thus they learned to be guardians, shepherds of the weak and of lost children! Of course, they do this guardian-shepherding-protecting through ridiculous regimens of eugenics to transform people into the ULTIMATE LIFE FORMS but hey.

Vic also suggested that aside from this, there were also other socio-economic factors. Namely, the Earthreign grew insecure of their autonomous superhuman killing machines, so they started relying more on their unstoppable hordes of Mandragoran clone-troops controlled by vat-grown Neuromancer psyker-slugmen-astropaths. This could explain why the Prefects gene-engineered psionic potential and susceptibility out of their GENOME. Initially to stem the Neuromancer/Earthreign controls. Later on this would be done out of religious principle, their undeniable belief in the power of individuality, the independence needed to forge perfection out of one’s own will and such, thus psionics – the melding and touching of minds, is seen as either abhorrent, or unfair, or cheating, or cowardly or weak or something.


On a side note, after the Reignfall, I think the Samtics did a lot of preemptive strikes to destroy a lot of Earthreign weapons and technology stores and stockpiles. So while they did later do the whole (in)humanitarian intervention, helping beleaguered fringe world yokel human populations rebuild their warpgates and infrastructure (while propping up supportive regimes)... a lot of their regional meddling stirred a lot of animosity within the prehistoric populations of the human star nations. I am sure the Prefects also did a lot of stockpile-destroying runs in the immediate Reignfall.

[Siege]

Seconding Shroom's comments, though slightly miffed that you went straight for the magical girl Zakalwe stereotype for the local Magi representative. :<

I have literally zero familiarity with magical girl fiction beyond what Lelouch wrote for SDNW, so I figured a Colonel Kurtz / Rambo / old-mind-young-body take on the perpetual youthful beauty idea was pretty interesting. Am I mistaken?

Warr-Rajet, a renegade Samtic collective inhabiting the body of a terrible void kraken. In its quest for self-sufficiency, the erratic creature scatters automated miners, semi-functional defense platforms and caches of valuable refined materials around its vague and contradictory territorial claims, which irritates the shipping concerns of the Cluster to no end. Though its badly-maintained and radiation-rusted body is no match for a proper warship if it came to a fight, no greater power has considered it worth it to do so.

The Moon-Drinker Knight, a Myrranni armiger nominally aligned with the Rani of Black Roses. With access to his personal hypercutter, an armory of exotic weapons and a cloaking device, he makes up a non-trivial portion of the Rani's military strength. His prominence stems from a predisposition for aggressive risk-taking that a landholder could ill afford, and those who understand Myrranni affairs peg him to try for an usurpation or even a secure consortship soon; but no, he's really just an excitable spree-killer with the smarts to have someone more administratively inclined set his list of targets.

I totally dig these ideas. I'm very enamored with the idea of Myrrani warriors as totally unstoppable hightech killfuck badasses handicapped only by their complete inability to coordiate or cooperate... And as for Warr-Rajet, well, you had me at 'void kraken', although I'm kinda at a loss to its exact motivation. What is it trying to be self-sufficient of?

WRT The Prefects: I like it, and the ideas I gave Shroom are pretty much wrapped up in what he's written already, so all that remains for me to say is A+, but they should probably be used sparingly .

[Shroom Man 777]

Hmmm... I think the ageless LITTLE GIRL MONSTER thing still works. Since part of the stuff is still semi-based on Langley's ancient SDNWings.

But yes, the Prefecture is meant to be a very sporadic thing - it has to remain mysterious, the unknowns - and the fact that what is known about them is mostly just FORCE+ individuals with Dreadstar-level war-vessels - is what scares the crap out of the rest of the Fracture.

I was also thinking that while the Shen Rhapsody has cornered the market in ORGONE ENERGY secreted by the dead titans, other nations might try to find alternative fuel sources... by obtaining Karlack carcasses in the Frontier, where the fabled Kereberos-Karlack Konflicts take place, resulting in nebulae filled with dead giant robots and dead hueg bioforms. All of which provide awesome resources for intrepid MONSTER HUNTERS.

(I don't know how justifiable the endeavor is, how the energies harvested from dead Karlacks compares to the energy expended by prospectors going to the edge of known space to obtain said resources).

[Invictus]

I have literally zero familiarity with magical girl fiction beyond what Lelouch wrote for SDNW, so I figured a Colonel Kurtz / Rambo / old-mind-young-body take on the perpetual youthful beauty idea was pretty interesting. Am I mistaken?

I'm not actually miffed nor do I think that hardass magical girl Zakalwes aren't an interesting idea, but I just like to insert the mild reminder now and then that not all Magi (or even most Magi) are in that mold.

And as for Warr-Rajet, well, you had me at 'void kraken', although I'm kinda at a loss to its exact motivation. What is it trying to be self-sufficient of?

To go Galt on the oppressive strictures of the Samtic Nexus; to carve out its own home by the sweat of its brow-equivalent in an unclaimed sector of space; and eventually, I suppose, to bootstrap itself into a Captain of Industry so it can become powerful enough to deal with other polities as equals and never fear the touch of state coercion again. Hence all the automated mines and resource stockpiles plopped down with more haste than care!

It's just not very good at the above. The creature does, however, represent a pervasive strain of thought in Samtic society.

EDIT: The PREFECTURE is situated as far from the USS-centric viewpoint as it is possible, "south" of the entire Fracture. Certainly, not much is meant to be known about it apart from the influence it has on humanity at large. I think they ought to be a bit more comprehensible than all the other inexplicable wandering baddasses like the Telestrons, Karlacks and Raptured Lords - or at least, be a usefully distinct flavor of them that can be used for that purpose.

Oh yeah, apart from being a whole another flavor of boundary zone, the Frontier is a look into the dynamics and tensions of NEUROM. It's where you have a fractious federation of warlord-states pushing "westward", actively taming, exploiting and developing the region in order to strengthen NEUROM's overall position back in the Fracture. You have native civilizations being displaced by ruthless space rail barons, and brushfire wars against hostile natives. You have exiles, anti-Ministry loyalists banished from the center of power to languish and build new power bases alongside proto-NEUROM enclaves and disfavored Ministers. You have the vast pysker-conspiracy that actually holds NEUROM together* struggling not to have its puppet warlords carve out petty fiefdoms away from the center of power, and ironically resulting in Ministry agents becoming the face of law and civilization in those parts.

*Concerning the Ministry of Fate's takeover, I once described to Shroom - imagine the Time of Treason went the other way.

[Siege]

I was also thinking that while the Shen Rhapsody has cornered the market in ORGONE ENERGY secreted by the dead titans, other nations might try to find alternative fuel sources... by obtaining Karlack carcasses in the Frontier, where the fabled Kereberos-Karlack Konflicts take place, resulting in nebulae filled with dead giant robots and dead hueg bioforms. All of which provide awesome resources for intrepid MONSTER HUNTERS.

Maybe the really huge Karlack forms have inside of themselves many kinds of strange pseudo-fluids that enable them to generate stellar levels of energy, open hyperspace windows and other things normally reserved for spaceships, and survive doing so. These starjuices, biobalms and para-distillates are highly prized: they are made into spirits and tonics that radically enhance the drinker's natural abilities. They have spectacular regenerative properties, bestow superhuman fitness, or radically expand the capabilities of the mind and the senses.

They are also crazy dangerous, frequently having mutagenic side effects or can cause you to literally self-combust when taken in the wrong dosage. Nonetheless they are sought after by many, and the easiest way to get at them is to go into Karlack graveyards and harvest them from corpses. Because otherwise you'd have to seek out a live Karlack hydroid and kill it, and only a crazy person would do that.

[Shroom Man 777]

How big would the economy for this be? A handful of rich folks who want to hulk out and turn into grotesque ubermenschens without having to try and steal even rarer and more dangerous Rhapsodite godflesh/orgone? Or would this be available to more of the people? Aside from the super-rich elite, would diluted Karlack juices also constitute stuff that high end Fracture militaries would use for their infantries and space troops and military/government/corporate astropaths? (To compensate and match Solarian Replicants and AI/CI tech, and Samtic/other rivals of that level?)

Cause I'm thinking that aside from this, similar to how Shen Rhap orgone could be used to fuel their tech, could this also be a viable way for Fracture states to power/enhance their hyperdrives and future spacetech? Like Avatar unobtanium... except from the guts of dead monstrosities? A huge dead Karlack spacewhale might have more exotic hyper-lubricant or space-lithium or RARE SPACE MINERALS than what a Fracture-state's normal Hadron colliders could produce in half a year?

[Siege]

Well, I wanted to edit in, but apparently never finished, that Karlackification could open the way for the Shepherds to have cadres of super soldiers, elite volunteers who are hopped up on superdrugs turning them nearly invincible until a few months down the line they start sprouting tentacles and are put down, their ultimate sacrifice remembered on the marble walls of the STOCKADE OF HEROES.

But yeah similarly maybe bits of Karlack hydroid brain are cut out and slaved to a navicomputer, enhancing it, but requiring a regular trickle of some strange orga-tonic in order not to atrophy. Just another way to get things done for people who might not be able to afford state of the art CompInt submeson cores for their starships.

[Shroom Man 777]

To prevent rapid mutaloidification and INFESTED TERRAN-ization, they could cryo-freeze these UNIVERSAL SOLDIERS and deploy them only when necessary. Shepherd-tech psionic dampeners prevent them from going "FOR THE OVERMIND! FEAR FOR THE SWARM!"

In some respects, the Karlack PRECIOUS BODILY FLUIDS achieves a lighter, less insane effect than Rhapsodite godflesh. I guess because the Karlacks have evolved a whole cosmic ecosystem to process and absorb and gradually whatever the harvested energies, from herbivore forms that eat sun-nectar or munch on planets, eventually processed and distributed (through suckling, through being eaten after life-or-death struggles, etc.) to predatory combat forms with bio-plasma beams and stuff that utilize said harvested energies. Whereas the Rhapsodites' anatomies do everything, from the initial world-eating to spewing doom-fields, by their own selves. A single Rhapsodite's stomach, liver, kidneys, guts etc. = a whole Karlack hive cluster's worth of cosmo-metabolic processes, a bioform ecology filling an entire star system or something. Hence... woah insane levels of madness.

[Siege]

Yes! After being subjected to highly invasive surgery to attach various tubes and inection systems and medfacs that dispense anti-Karlack prophylactics to their innards Shepherd ULTIMATE SOLDIERS are reclassified as weapons systems. Their names are immediately taken from the active service member rolls and inscribed on the marble walls because THEY ARE ALREADY DEAD. They get cryo-stored and mind-wiped and mission-imprinted and are dropped into war zones from low orbit, and they basically function as mobile area denial / terror weapons, like the T-600 in Terminator Salvation (with more biomass absorption gribbliness). They will kill everything that even vaguely looks like the enemy. But they can only function in the field for a week or so before their medfacs run dry and Karlackification begins, and if that happens Shepherd siege artillery gets the order to vacuum bomb their entire grid because IT'S THE ONLY WAY TO BE SURE.

Perhaps in select cases soldiers who've 'run dry' in the field survive the bombing and manage to stem the tide of Karlackification through submersion in near-freezing water. Hypotrauma can slow the infestation whilst their enhanced biology protects them from freezing to death, and in certain situations that offers the soldier a small window to maybe recover at least a little of their own mind. Some of these 'retrograde' soldiers have formed the secret society AMAROK of half-Karlack half-human shape shifters that has infiltrated the Shepherds to an uknown extent (one more reason for RAMPANT PARANOIA).

Also, the idea of some kind of giant Karlack anemone-like thing partially enveloping a sun and stretching millions of kilometers out into space, puffing out the Karlack equivalent of spores that drift on the solar winds until they fall into gas giants farther in-system, where they can feed on hydrocarbons and metamorphosize and eventually rise back to the surface as more mature bioforms... Is interesting to say the least.

[Shroom Man 777]

The Shepistani bio-troops could totally try to control their processes by grafting cryonics onto themselves, so they appear to be all Mr. Freeze-like, cracking terrible ice-related puns, like "What ended the Earthreign? THE ICE AGE!" and "Ice to meet you! Cool party! Chill!" but when the Batmans or what have yous have beaten them with heat-weapons or whatever and come up with a smug one-liner, turns out they were WRONG and the Shep-bug-troop's bio-infestations go out of control and reveal their TRUE FORM.

Shepistani SOCOM would probably implant micro-nukes into their bio-troopers, as well as employ tac-nuke artillery barrages, but a smart trooper could easily just do self-surgery to remove the nuke. There would be systems to prevent nuke-removal, but the bio-infestations are so insane that these Infested Terrans could literally perform some grotesque mitosis and shed/bud off a vestigial torso-cavity containing the nuke, splitting off into a separate body... man. Nightmare horrors their commanders couldn't have anticipated!


The Karlack ecosystems would have the harvester-organisms (your dyson-swarm-anemones, corona/nebula planktons) designed to transfer the gathered and digested raw cosmic energy to other forms, but while some do this fairly straightforward, like cows or aphids that secrete nectar for the symbiotic/commensalistic companion organisms to suck, other bioforms might actually hold off on their absorbed harvests and the hungry recipient organisms might have to fight, subdue and even kill them... just like in nature! Because the victorious creature ("predator" and "prey" alike) will have to fight and adapt and grow stronger and fitter to propagate SUPERIOR GENOMES and all that shit.

Since the Swarm isn't entirely, directly controlled by the sentient Aspects/Cerebrates/Overminds, the concentrated will/personality/nature-forces/spirits that arise when shit gets real. In normal mode, it operates on a semi-blind, semi-indirectly-aware, semi-natural, semi-constructed Darwinian, evolutionary thinggy-ma-jig, so Karlacks are just as likely to eat each other as they are to eat people's planets and stuff. The Circle of Life!

[Siege]

The ULTIMATE SOLDIERS can probably go two different ways when they run out of anti-Karlack-biotics. Either the Karlack strains go virulent, completely overrun all defense mechanisms and take over the body, with all the mutoidificatory effects one would expect. In which case yes, you'd get Thing-like gribbliness. This probably happens in the vast majority of cases, hence the vacuum bombing protocols.

BUT! In certain outlier cases when the parasitical virulence is slowed sufficiently (for example by near-freezing) the Karlack strain mutates from pathogenic to symbiotic. It does this because extreme hypothermia forces it to work with the soldier's natural biology instead of against it - it's literally either that or dying, so Karlack evolutionary drive kicks in and chooses life. The infestation establishes an uneasy balance with its host body, forming a breed of half-human half-Karlacks.

These shape-shifters can easily pass for humans and due to the sophisticated nature of Karlack mutation are extremely difficult to detect. They are the Cylons of the Shepherd worlds. They must operate cautiously however: if they use their nifty Karlack abilities too much their biology is thrown out of whack and the Karlack part takes over entirely, with all the sudden-tentacle-sprouting that entails.

Also they might have a constant gnawing in the back of their skull to EAT PEOPLE. Because the Swarm hungers! And they can hear the Hive Mind in their dreams. And when they're awake if it's close. Shapeshifting cylon vampire genestealers GO.

[Shroom Man 777]

All this because the Shepherds needed an edge against NEUROM Ministry of Fate operatives and Nova Meropian Calibrationist Rectifier technotheocratech-marines. (Vic and I figure that maybe the Nova Meropians can be a douchey Calibrationist state and engage in some kind of face off with the Sheps and the NEUROM)

[Invictus]

It seems fun to compare the ideological characters and the technological specialties of the various Fracture polities by comparing their badass transhuman spec ops supersoldiers. The Shepherds use their Karlack rancher expertise to create these bio-hybrid UNIVERSAL SOLDIERS out of volunteers (?), which are living weapons with limited expiration dates who just happen to look like minigun-toting eighties bodybuilder commandoes (having supercharged physiologies does tend to give you bulging biceps and a healthy oil-like sheen) until they lose control of their bodies, in which case they turn into minigun-toting Resident Evil bosses. It's all a bit rough and crude and disposable.

The Shen have their SEERS, whose titan-ichor enhancements results in actual quasi-magical abilities, but whose unbounded forms are a bit more...surreal? Or they just catch THEOSTIGMA and waste away instead of undergoing runaway hypersteroidal grotesqueification, which I suppose reflects the character of the dead titans which the Shen Rhapsody relies on. Calibrationists like Nova Meropia have more conventional posthuman killborgs, which I suppose aren't that different in nature from USS FORCE units except...with a less freewheeling feel, I suppose? While transhumanism in the USS represents the proper liberation of human potential, Meropian posthumans still represent the exemplification of Calibrationism, a subsumption of the individual into a wider totalizing ideology.

On that front I'm not sure what shape the NEUROM military elite should take outside the Sith-Knighty agents of their psychic backers. I mean, would the Ministry even allow the state to foster a force that can challenge their own grip on power? Or does NEUROM have a tendency to value quantity and above-average quality over elite superweapons anyway? In any case I'm seeing a wide-reaching program to grab all natural psykers and conscript them in one way or another, on a scale far in excess to other polities' attempts to institutionalize their own psyker populations.

Grand Auriga...then can definitely count on support from more militant Magi, but their own aristocratic transhuman elite population probably have their own ways of being fielded. Maybe they tend to be leaders and officers? Those nobles without direct battle-applicable talents can still act as force multipliers, making the human part of the Aurigan war machine function as smoothly as possible. The more direct-action nobles I envision more as esoteric ninja clans and Dune-style battle savants, carrying the day in very old-timey Horatio Hornblower sorts of ways. Boarding enemy warships and having swordfights just works for them.*

*Compare: their distant ubermensch cousins from the Prefecture, who obtain victory solely through individual feats of arête and SPECTACLES.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hmmm... are the NEUROM populaces and their de jure secular governments still psyker-phobic tools of the Ministry? The pogroms and the Ministry of Fate child-kidnappings might diminish the psyker population available for conventional NEUROM forces, and a psykerphobe population would have objections if the military had a frickin huge psyker commando force (the Ministry is, by definition, a huge SECRET psyker commando force though).

The NEUROM would just use normal combined arms and such, perhaps conventionally-enhanced supersoldiers, and wundernapkinwaffen vengeance weapons of the Sternreich and badasses from the Mandragoran Principalities. If the Ministry of Fate was the SS, then the NEUROM's main forces would be like the Wermacht and Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine. I think the Ministry of Fate wouldn't really be into fighting on battlefields, their pawns do that, while their cult wraps its fingers around the population and the government and the hierarchy, something no super-weapon or Space Marine or Haloid Meister Chief can counter-act (though there could have been NEUROM inter-wars and shit, but really they're woefully unprepared for internal* psyker assaults).

*NEUROM would have to be resilient to outsider psyker interference from the Magi and Aurigans, as well as other psi-capable Fracture powers. They would have to have secular/conventional contra-psyk measures, as well as Ministry of Fate anti-psyker psyker agents.


I liek your idea for the Aurigans. Yeah, the Grandeur of Auriga's transhuman nobility would also take a step back and let the conventional military's sheer logistics and balanced quality-quantity combined forces mix do the job while they play supporting roles, force multipliers, decisive interventionings, all HORROR HANNINGTONS and whatnot.

Their conventional forces would be capable enough and large enough for them to be the dominant great power in the Fracture region, because very few unsustainable supersoldiers are really not tenable as an instrument for large-scale empire-building.

[Siege]

NEUROM planets could be in a constant state of turmoil. They're densely populated but relatively underdeveloped with revolutions, military coups and pogroms happening every other Tuesday. This gives the impression that they should be easy pickings but strangely invasion forces tend to get mauled real bad.

Landing on a NEUROM planet is like stirring a hornet's nest. Shit tends to go badly wrong for the invaders, like the Battle of Mogadishu on a planetary scale: even super tactical ball breaker space marines get chewed up and spat out by superior numbers.

Outsiders just chalk this up to the rabid pack aggression and xenophobia of NEUROM populations but in reality it's because Ministry of Fate operatives can mind-whip the entire population into a frenzy in no time at all.

The Ministry doesn't fight you head on. It hides behind puppets, behind all the warlords and generals it has mind-fucked into obedience, and behind the meat shields of thousands of people it will just throw at you until your own soldiers are sick of the killing.

You can't punch the Ministry, or stick a phase blade through it, because it refuses to fight you head on. At best you catch a few beamsword wielding flunkies every once in a while. But the masterminds are always in the shadows, hiding behind so many layers of expendable brainwashed goons it's impossible to figure out who's pulling the strings, because they mind-fuck their puppets so thoroughly they don't even remember being mindfucked.

[Invictus]

I'm not entirely sure if said fierce territorial defense necessitates large-scale mindfuckery (outside, say, heavy cognometric indoctrination coupled with the timely dispensation of kill-triggers) if the hidden Ministry overlords can just order large numbers of military units into the breach and let NEUROM's authoritarian culture do the rest. And of course, both of these things can lead into one another. Having the secular junta foster a culture where military service and obedience to one's betters is valued above all is not mutually exclusive with having Ministry propagandists setting up psi-arrays and priming the population's minds with these traits. (Do Ministers manipulate via non-psychic means? Do they value whatever conventional espionage/infowar expertise they might have retained from subverting the old intelligence apparatus? Or are they too far gone to not see mindfucking as mindfucking unless it is literal mindfucking?)

And while we're here we might as well settle on the internal political state of NEUROM. We have kind of established them as a military alliance of militarist regimes who haven't quite gelled. I have also made the assumption that they were able to counter the hegemonic advantages of Grand Auriga via sheer space Prussianess, which implies a certain degree of regimentation and efficient politik to back its war machine with. Did the Ministry deliberately sabotage all attempts at an effective centralized administration (outside themselves) so that nothing can challenge its grip? Or is there something more inherent in the gaggle of warlords that makes its political structure resemble the Third Reich and the Ministry is doing a service in holding the mess together at all?