The Hegemony (Slightly More Than a Teaser)

[Bordermarcher]

[ooc]This is the opening bit for a sci-fi setting that's been rattling around in my head longer than anything else. It's something of a mash-up of Mass Effect, Firefly, Samurai Jack, and Dr. Who: ultra-dystopian future where humanity's been forcibly integrated into an authoritarian version of the Federation. Hope this whets your appetites![/ooc]

2033 must've been a good fucking year to be human.

The economy was improving, most of the major wars were winding down, we'd finally started to get climate change under control, and we were starting to make our first steps out into the cosmos. There was a colony on the moon, countless thousands living in Lagrange habitats, mining-probes scouting out the asteroid belt, and supposedly even talk of setting up shop on Mars for good this time. Oh, it must've been glorious.

It started with the long-range probes.

The next say, the Mars rovers stopped transmitting.

The day after that, Luna went silent.

And then geo-satellites began to go down. The whole telecommunications grid went dark. We panicked. But not as much as we should've.

Because that was the day the sky caught fire.

They say it was a show of force, meant to cow us into submission by showing that they were willing to slaughter a few thousand to accomplish their goals. The largest orbital habitats, blazing with nuclear fire. Then came the broadcast: unconditional surrender of every head of state, the complete demobilization of Earth's military. Maybe they were too proud or too scared or just too fucking stupid to realize how pathetically outmatched we were as a species, but the leaders of the world decided to stand and fight. You want to know how it went?

Well, they don't call it the Two-Day War for nothing.

The sky was full of attack-ships and landing craft, alien soldiers in powered armor ripping apart the defenders of every capitol city with weapons we had no defense against. Tehran self-destructed. The Old Russian Bastard ate his own gun before he let them take him. They executed the POTUS on the Capitol lawn. And then they looked at us, huddled and cowering before them, and welcomed us into the Hegemony.

And then came the ships. Ships so massive, so unimaginably-fucking-vast, their hulls blotted out the sun and their engines boiled away the clouds. Those who can remember say the Hegemony soldiers smiled as they rounded us up and herded us, all ten billion of us, into the cavernous holds of the Diaspora Ships, to be taken and repopulated across every corner of Hegemony space.

That was 100 years ago.

[SA]

Why did they do it? They "obviously" don't need us.

[sparkletwist]

Yes, I agree, why?

It seems like, for whatever agenda they might have had, there would be better ways to carry it out. I also rather dislike the trope of aliens being able to blitzkrieg over the Earth in some inconsequential number of days; while they may well have highly superior technology and resources, I think logistics in a war are always going to be something of a tricky business, and they are still trying to conquer and subjugate an entire planet.

On the other hand, at least it makes a nice schtick for humans other than "the versatile race," which is another trope I dislike.
[ic=Humans]Of all the races, humans are the most likely to hold a grudge. And do they ever have one.[/ic]

[SA]

Clearly the Hegemony wasn't waging a war. Humanity thought they were, but Humanity was obviously wrong. It's like when you lean down to pick up a screaming little toddler and he kicks and swings at you and you're like "yeah, yeah, OK tough guy," then you just pick him right up.

Besides which (this is in part a suggestion) the military power of the Hegemony doesn't make a difference in a gameplay context if you aren't planning for them to serve as adversaries. This looks like a rather belligerent kind of technological uplift; a nifty piece of lore which preambles but gives only a small measure of context to the setting itself.

So...

Is humanity divided? Scattered? They are Diaspora ships, after all. Did families get separated, so that pre-conquest bonds could not challenge the Hegemony's authority? Is the Hegemony one species, or many? Do their anatomies reflect a hard-science aesthetic, with life evolving among a sea of unknown variables to produce arrangements unimaginable to earth-kind? Or soft-science, with crocodile men and octopus-babes and stellar parakeets that flit tween the stars (all of them disturbingly anthropoid)? Has humanity been transformed by new technologies? Culturally? Physiologically? Metaphysically? What is the Hegemony's intention? Conquest? Paternalism? Do they defend us against a greater threat that humankind is ill-equipped to face? Is the hegemony governed by directives of forgotten origin and purpose, so that they could not tell us why if they wanted to?

Anyway, colour me intrigued.

[LD]

Maybe they need the humans as biological slave units, like the Mass Effect Reapers creating those odd Zombielike creatures from the lesser units- they're machines and they feel that they cannot make robots to do their tasks, so instead they use organics. ... not the best idea or explanation, but a potential one.

I admit I am curious as to why the invaders needed the humans- it's intriguing :)

>> I also rather dislike the trope of aliens being able to blitzkrieg over the Earth in some inconsequential number of days;
The war could be over in two days. The first Iraq war took very few days. When you have overwhelming force and you take out C&C, you can end a war fast. Now, the herding of people into ships and fighting any insurgency could take a while, but I see little problem with a war being over in two days.

>> This looks like a rather belligerent kind of technological uplift;
I agree. It's an interesting way to start the game. I'd be interested in hearing about what the major conflicts are that the players will confront.

[Bordermarcher]

A full fucking century later, humanity's still suffering from a nasty little case of the future shocks. No big surprise there, really, not after we were presented with what the late, great Ian M. Banks would describe as an "Outside Context Problem." We were sitting-pretty, thinking we were the kings and queens of our own little corner of the Orion-Cygnus Arm and that we were going to go and spread ourselves across the stars when really, we were just a bunch of fucking bushmen making bamboo canoes with no idea our little island had just been annexed by an empire of strangely-colored people we couldn't even fucking conceive of existing.

To say that the Hegemony "uplifted" the human race is like saying that the Romans "uplifted" the Gauls. Actually, you know what, it's exactly like that. In Hegemony-jargon, it's what's known as a "hard integration", which is weird, because I don't think I've ever heard of a "soft integration." As you may have gathered, the Hegemony is not some lovey-dovey liberal-ass United Federation of Planets with some Prime-fucking-Directive not to screw around with unenlightened savages who haven't even worked out faster-than-light travel. It's not a perfect translation, but the core philosophy of the Hegemony is something along the lines of "It is the necessity of the strong to dominate the weak, and the privilege of the weak to be dominated by the strong."

Cheerful.

The Hegemony's not, as we'd first theorized while they were barbecuing our capital cities, a single race. In fact, it's a quasi-empire made up of roughly a dozen separate species:

The horned, predatory, hyper-social Askaji
The boneless, arboreal Haran
The militant, octopus-faced Isliklidae
The multi-eyed, chitin-covered Phoros
The monogendered, biologically-sociopathic Rana
The brilliant, amphibious, fungal-cephalopod Ranoch
The fluid, poly-sentient Samuac
The ophidian, near-human Silonim
The many-limbed, arthropodal Trithlili, though we usually just call them the Trill
The hulking, aggressive, ape-like Xoth


Running the show is the Hegemon Council. This is, while the Council members claim to rule in the benevolent interests of all peoples within their borders, only the five most powerful species actually get a seat on the Council and the voice in galactic politics that goes with it: the Isliklidae, the Rana, the Ranoch, the Trill, and the Xoth: the so-called 'Founding Races'. Everyone else, which you better believe includes humans, just has to put up with having a few petty ambassadors who get the privilege of groveling at the Hegemons' feet, because the Hegemon Council absolutely does not fuck around when it comes to their subjects (ahem, citizens) disregarding their unquestionable authority. No, it doesn't matter that your race didn't ask to be uplifted, because it was for your own good and if you want it to continue being in your own good, you'll sit down, shut the hell up, and not make trouble for the Council.

Phalanx enforces the order of this authoritarian regime. Otherwise known as HegSec, they're both the police and the military and they enforce the law like they're in a fucking DMZ. Sure, there's a whole convoluted legal system, trial by a jury of your peers and all that shit, but you fuck up any worse than a misdemeanor and you're basically handing the Phalanx troopers who come calling license to shoot your ass in the street, if they've got a mind to. Membership is open to humans, but not a lot end up enlisting: unless you've got the brains to hack it as an officer or are just one hell of a fighter, the leadership more inclined to use you as an assault-drone they don't have to pay for.

[sparkletwist]

Clearly the Hegemony wasn't waging a war. Humanity thought they were, but Humanity was obviously wrong. It's like when you lean down to pick up a screaming little toddler and he kicks and swings at you and you're like "yeah, yeah, OK tough guy," then you just pick him right up.

While I understand your analogy, things like a "show of force," "attack-ships and landing craft" and "powered armor" sure sound like a war to me. Why wear armor if there wasn't some way we could possibly hurt them?

It seems to me that for the feel you're describing, a display of "any sufficiently advanced technology" might work better, and add a bit more general weirdness to the background story. You're right that their military power may not really matter, so this is a good way to make it not matter at all, even from the beginning.

The war could be over in two days. The first Iraq war took very few days.

This analogy is not really applicable. A better one-- because it actually involved taking and holding enemy territory-- would be the second Iraq war, which took... quite a bit longer.

[Bordermarcher]

The askaji evolved from pack-based predators and traces of their heritage can still be seen in their hyper-social behavior, as well as their lean, wiry musculatures and semi-digitigrade legs. They require constant interpersonal interaction, and an askaje denied that sort of stimulation will quickly spiral into self-destructive depression. Physically, they are slightly shorter than humans, with large eyes and sharp, angular teeth designed for tearing apart meat. Their skin is typically red or pink and broken up by streaks and speckles of white or black, now-vestigial traces of their evolutionary camouflage. By far their most distinctive feature is the crown of twisting, curling horns they grow in adulthood, the shapes and patterns unique to the individual. All askaji exhibit an almost-preternatural awareness of body language and non-verbal cues, making them extraordinarily difficult to deceive.

Strictly-speaking, the haran don't have a single bone in their bodies. In lieu of a proper skeleton, their bodies are supported by cartilage and a series of fluid-filled bladders, giving them unparalleled flexibility. A naturally arboreal race with an innate sense of balance, their limbs are disproportionately long, though the typical haran habit of crouching rather than standing upright means that the different in height is rarely noticed.

The isliklidae earned the none-too-endearing moniker of 'squid-faces' thanks to the long, fleshy tendrils that hang down over their fang-filled mouths and extend past their chins. Fully opposable, these tendrils play a role in both feeding and communication. On average slightly taller than humans, their clawed, four-fingered hands are strong, but also surprisingly-dexterous. Isliklid skin comes in a variety of tones, ranging from purplish-black to pale blue-grey. Theirs is an extremely militant culture, exalting the warrior-scholar archetype above all others. Virtually all isliklid children are raised in crèches that resemble barracks as much as school and few choose not to enlist in the military for at least one tour. They define themselves largely by this cultural martial prowess, forming the backbone of the Hegemony's military strength and providing a disproportionate number of soldiers for the Phalanx.

Rana are biologically-hardwired with the sort of self-centrism, manipulativeness, lack of empathy, and tendency towards risk-taking behavior that would characterize psychopathy in a human. Indeed, rana consider the lack of these traits to be a mental disease. Of all the races in the Hegemony, they are the most human-looking, albeit hairless and green-skinned. A monogendered species, they reproduce through a form of parthenogenesis; while they are typically described as female, they do not nurse their young and so lack breasts, giving them a weirdly-androgynous look. Because of their natural sociopathy, rana almost never willingly cooperate for their mutual benefit. They are constantly angling to advance their own agendas at the expense of others and will only ever submit to another's authority in the face of demonstrable evidence that doing so is crucial to their own survival.

By far the least humanoid race in the Hegemony, the ranoch resemble nothing so much as a huge, radial mass of tentacles best described as a cross between an octopus and a sea star, with twelve main limbs for movement and manipulation and many smaller ones tipped in photoreceptors. They are both a cephalopod and a fungus, their bodies covered in colorful, bioluminescent patterns. Ranoch also have the distinction of being the most naturally-intelligent species known, on average possessing intellects well within the range of human genius and multi-lobed brains capable of conducting multiple, distinct thought-processes simultaneously.

Also called 'ant-taurs', the trithlili or trill are arthropods roughly the size of a horse or lion. They have three pairs of main limbs, all of which end in opposable claws, and half a dozen smaller pairs used mainly for basic manipulation. Their bodies are arranged in such a way that they can transition from loping along the ground on all six legs to a semi-upright gait almost instantaneously, hence the nickname. Their heads are broad, with two pairs of wide insectoid eyes and mouthparts that fold inwards. They do not use their mouths for speaking: instead, they communicate by piping air through holes in their horny, chitinous exoskeleton, their language distinctly musical in nature.

The average xoth stands at least seven feet tall, their bodies seemingly built from nothing but solid muscle, with squashed, reptilian faces and thick, leathery skin. Just one of their three-fingered hands could encircle a human head almost completely, and despite their considerable bulk, they move with impressive grace and agility. Xoth are biologically-predisposed to violence and aggression, both physically and mentally. Their bones are next to impossible to shatter and their hides provide a measure of protection against even modern ballistics, so a blow that would literally stove-in the ribcage of a human would hardly stop a xoth. It takes very little coaxing to elicit a territorial response from them, and once enraged, their hardwire imperative is to lash out at the perceived rival with the maximum amount of force.