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Evil Mastermind posted:Firefly/Serenity Cosmology As enjoyable as the series was, I still think it would have not been as popular if it got more seasons, that's really stupid. Alien Rope Burn posted:Still, I don't think B5 gets the credit it deserves for basically giving us the serial format that's become the norm for a lot of genre shows. For all of its aging effects and hammy performances, most genre shows now resemble B5 more than Star Trek. B5 was good enough concept that Paramount made a series to torpedo it because they were afraid of it unseating Star Trek. Star Trek shows also tend to suffer from Galapagos syndrome and tend to resemble a show from the 60's because the TNG writers just copied TOS for a couple seasons and no one was usually brave enough to deviate from that serial/standalone model. Star Trek was and is still being continually hobbled by continuity and their turbonerd fans that they had to practically destroy it to do anything with it. It just got built up so much with continuity and fans nitpicking everything that they do or say that they can't touch anything without reading a show Bible that's probably bigger than the actual Bible. EDIT: Doresh posted:The Dominion War also plays into DS9s biggest strength: The big focus on non-Federation characters. I think even the biggest Trekkie will admit that those Starfleet officers can get a bit stiff and idealistic at times, so it's interesting seeing the setting through the lens of guys like Quark or Garak who are noticably more self-serving. These characters also continually critique the Federation characters, like Quark criticizing the hypocrisy of humans, or Rom mocking Jake about his Marxist society when Jake asks him for money. RocknRollaAyatollah fucked around with this message at 21:00 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 20:57
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Whenever "terraforming" is brought up in sci-fi, particularly in games, I begin to wonder how technology is used to move a planet closer to its sun, or significantly change its mass, or...well, I hope you brought a few million bags of topsoil.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:06
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Doresh posted:The Dominion War also plays into DS9s biggest strength: The big focus on non-Federation characters. I think even the biggest Trekkie will admit that those Starfleet officers can get a bit stiff and idealistic at times, so it's interesting seeing the setting through the lens of guys like Quark or Garak who are noticably more self-serving. I think it also helped that the series was focused on a fixed location as opposed to an exploratory ship, because it made stuff feel more immediate and unavoidable. It let the focus shift from "the discovery of the week" to "this ongoing thing we're standing in the middle of and can't escape". RocknRollaAyatollah posted:As enjoyable as the series was, I still think it would have not been as popular if it got more seasons, that's really stupid.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:07
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e: dp
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Jan 3, 2017 21:11
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:These characters also continually critique the Federation characters, like Quark criticizing the hypocrisy of humans, or Rom mocking Jake about his Marxist society when Jake asks him for money. It also helps that the Federation characters are much more flawed (and the story acknowledges that they're flawed) than you see in any other Star Trek series. No one would argue that Ben Sisko isn't a good man, but he has a temper, occasionally picks unnecessary fights, tends to assume guilt for burdens that aren't his, and can be stubborn to the point of seriously endangering local geopolitics. Bashir is a stirling example of what genetic enhancement can achieve, and he's a mire of doubt and a cripplingly low self-esteem because he sees all his gifts as things bestowed on him rather than earned. And the story and ongoing characters have to deal with the Federation characters being deeply flawed individuals who don't win all the time. You'd never see Picard be party to In The Pale Moonlight, and you know perfectly well the show would find a way to say it wasn't really Kirk, Janeway, or Archer's fault somehow.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:13
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Cythereal posted:It also helps that the Federation characters are much more flawed (and the story acknowledges that they're flawed) than you see in any other Star Trek series. No one would argue that Ben Sisko isn't a good man, but he has a temper, occasionally picks unnecessary fights, tends to assume guilt for burdens that aren't his, and can be stubborn to the point of seriously endangering local geopolitics. Bashir is a stirling example of what genetic enhancement can achieve, and he's a mire of doubt and a cripplingly low self-esteem because he sees all his gifts as things bestowed on him rather than earned. And the story and ongoing characters have to deal with the Federation characters being deeply flawed individuals who don't win all the time. Also, Bashir is Starfleet's Greatest Fuckboy, but we won't hold that against him, really. He's doing his best. E: Personally, my favorite is Odo because I fuckin' love a good Space Detective, and even he has flaws and darkness to him in ways he tried to hide from the people around him. (There's a whole episode about that, as I recall, where his perfect justice is found to be flawed.)
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Jan 3, 2017 21:15
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Also the universe loved loving with O'Brian.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:16
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:These characters also continually critique the Federation characters, like Quark criticizing the hypocrisy of humans, or Rom mocking Jake about his Marxist society when Jake asks him for money. There was a chance that Voyager could have been an okay show is they had kept this up. Instead the Maquis turn dramatically from a whole shipload of rebels and revolutionaries into two people perfectly toeing the federation party line in about three episodes.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:23
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I swear, if you skip Voyager's pilot episode(s), you'll never know that about half of the crew are supposed to be former terrorists / freedom fighters.RocknRollaAyatollah posted:These characters also continually critique the Federation characters, like Quark criticizing the hypocrisy of humans, or Rom mocking Jake about his Marxist society when Jake asks him for money. That part with Jake was pretty fun. The Federation is this utopia that either has no money or little to no need for it, and then you have this species that is all about the money. In a galaxy that still cares a lot about that stuff. Cythereal posted:It also helps that the Federation characters are much more flawed (and the story acknowledges that they're flawed) than you see in any other Star Trek series. No one would argue that Ben Sisko isn't a good man, but he has a temper, occasionally picks unnecessary fights, tends to assume guilt for burdens that aren't his, and can be stubborn to the point of seriously endangering local geopolitics. Bashir is a stirling example of what genetic enhancement can achieve, and he's a mire of doubt and a cripplingly low self-esteem because he sees all his gifts as things bestowed on him rather than earned. And the story and ongoing characters have to deal with the Federation characters being deeply flawed individuals who don't win all the time. They offier felt overall more human and relatable. Especially that one time Q visited and got decked by Sisko because he has no time for an omnipotent jester on his station. Evil Mastermind posted:I've been rewatching DS9 in the morning as I get ready for work, and this morning's episode happened to be "In The Pale Moonlight", which may be the most non-Starfleet-officer-est episode of the series. It's also one of the best. Dat episode. And there was still a bit of discovery, what with them either doing some scouting on the other side of the wormhole, or having to deal with whatever came out of it this time. Halloween Jack posted:Whenever "terraforming" is brought up in sci-fi, particularly in games, I begin to wonder how technology is used to move a planet closer to its sun, or significantly change its mass, or...well, I hope you brought a few million bags of topsoil. The way terraforming is usually portrayed, you basically shoot a magical ray/torpedo at a planet and wait.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:25
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RocknRollaAyatollah posted:B5 was good enough concept that Paramount made a series to torpedo it because they were afraid of it unseating Star Trek. Star Trek shows also tend to suffer from Galapagos syndrome and tend to resemble a show from the 60's because the TNG writers just copied TOS for a couple seasons and no one was usually brave enough to deviate from that serial/standalone model. Star Trek was and is still being continually hobbled by continuity and their turbonerd fans that they had to practically destroy it to do anything with it. It just got built up so much with continuity and fans nitpicking everything that they do or say that they can't touch anything without reading a show Bible that's probably bigger than the actual Bible. I think Trek's decline was far more the former than the latter. The serial format worked for The Next Generation after the show got a few writer changes for Season 3 and found its own path, but the showrunners didn't know how to do anything else, which led to Voyager throwing away half the premise of the show (The two crews being forced to cooperate) and just being TNG with lovely characters (And lovely writing) most of the time. DS9 had real story and character arcs, and while it never became the part of popular culture that TNG or the original series did, it became goddamn good Sci-Fi. Halloween Jack posted:Whenever "terraforming" is brought up in sci-fi, particularly in games, I begin to wonder how technology is used to move a planet closer to its sun, or significantly change its mass, or...well, I hope you brought a few million bags of topsoil. Yeah, and how the hell do they travel faster-than-light anyway, it's impossible to travel faster than light in a vacuum! Evil Mastermind posted:Also the universe loved loving with O'Brian. He really is the best character of that era, the everyman hero to the super-duper Starfleet officers. He's just an average enlisted grease monkey and family man who's now part of events waaay over his head. And he helps save the Federation anyway.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:25
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Londo was in TRON too, as the heavyset dude who dies in the jai alai duel. I enjoyed and still enjoy B5, I think in part because I cut my teeth on low-budget TV sci-fi like Doctor Who and Jason of Star Command and other shows where character actors wait out their dry years. B5 lifted a lot of its interstellar politics from the early 20th century, but it also borrowed from genre sources that weren't the inevitable Enemy Mine knockoff episode. The show was a virtual parade of guest stars I recognized from cult TV and movies, and dorky as it is, it was nice to see them again. I feel the same way about Jeff Combs, even though I really don't care for post-TNG Trek. I think it helped that the show was semi-serialized, with character arcs and meaningful callbacks, rather than the strictly episodic format that most TV was given to. It wasn't a soap opera, but there was recognizable continuity. I didn't like DS9. The wormhole aliens were yet another godlike race standing cheek and jowl with Q, Trelane, Adonis and that CGI slime mold from the first episode of Voyager. The Bajorans were as flat as any other Trek nasal appliance of the week, and they traded beating the poo poo out of Worf for simply making GBS threads all over O'Brien. I don't watch Trek for the space battles and mil-wank, I've got Star Wars for that. DS9, in a lot of ways, felt like the kind of jarring fanfic where Equestria ends up drafting everyone into a standing army. Yes, I realize that Starfleet is a military organization, but too much Starfleet Battles in earlier years pretty much carbonized any interest I had in The Trek Universe At War. I have friends who love it, but it does nothing for me. And that's even before the silly wank with the Wraiths and Sisko. Sisko bloodying Q's nose was one of the funniest goddamn moments in Trek, though. Edit: Not the Founders. Bieeanshee fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 21:27
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Doresh posted:The way terraforming is usually portrayed, you basically shoot a magical ray/torpedo at a planet and wait. At least in the case where this was literally the process in Star Trek, it was a major plot point that this produced a short-lived and violently unstable biosphere that would quickly tear itself apart and the device became more commonly spoken of as a superweapon.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:30
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There was an episode of TNG with terraforming involved, and the two minute capsule was 'Yeah, this is going to take decades to centuries at best'. ...and later in the series, they shot torpedoes into a planet to make it stop tearing itself to bits. So, yeah.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:32
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Cythereal posted:At least in the case where this was literally the process in Star Trek, it was a major plot point that this produced a short-lived and violently unstable biosphere that would quickly tear itself apart and the device became more commonly spoken of as a superweapon. I remember one bad sci-fi novel, Moon People or its sequel, I forget which, where they terraformed Mars by literally microwaving it. Something like the power of 200 microwave ovens and BAM, suddenly Martian life sprang into existence. As for actual terraforming, it'd probably require a planet that's already VERY close to being habitable. Already inside the habitable zone, just needs some water added or whatever(smash some comets into it and call it a day. Bam.). Or some stellar engineering poo poo.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:34
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DS9 and Bab5 were a case of parallel evolution. One was not meant to torpedo the other. There's more than enough quotes from the period from executives on either show and evidence from like, casting crossovers to demonstrate that they had nothing but respect for each other. loving Majel Barrett appears on Bab5 for poo poo's sake. There have always been a ton of fan-legends about how there was vitriol between them, or between the studios, or how Paramount was originally pitched Bab5 and said no then wrote DS9 instead--and they've always been nonsense. Please stop perpetuating them.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:36
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PurpleXVI posted:I remember one bad sci-fi novel, Moon People or its sequel, I forget which, where they terraformed Mars by literally microwaving it. Something like the power of 200 microwave ovens and BAM, suddenly Martian life sprang into existence. I've read a book series where one of the few practical uses humanity found for time travel was terraforming. Proper terraforming took tens of millions of years, but with the magic of time travel that's not an obstacle.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:37
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Bieeardo posted:There was an episode of TNG with terraforming involved, and the two minute capsule was 'Yeah, this is going to take decades to centuries at best'. Torpedoes: What can't they fix? Bieeardo posted:I didn't like DS9. The wormhole aliens were yet another godlike race standing cheek and jowl with Q, Trelane, Adonis and that CGI slime mold from the first episode of Voyager. The Bajorans were as flat as any other Trek nasal appliance of the week, and they traded beating the poo poo out of Worf for simply making GBS threads all over O'Brien. I don't watch Trek for the space battles and mil-wank, I've got Star Wars for that. DS9, in a lot of ways, felt like the kind of jarring fanfic where Equestria ends up drafting everyone into a standing army. Yes, I realize that Starfleet is a military organization, but too much Starfleet Battles in earlier years pretty much carbonized any interest I had in The Trek Universe At War. I have friends who love it, but it does nothing for me. And that's even before the silly wank with the Wraiths and Sisko. The Founder were a somewhat different breed of godlike race. The others are either jerks with a god-complex, jesters or weird secluded beings who like to "test" lesser beings. The Founders on the other hand were a more esoteric version of Doctor Manhattan. Godlike? Yes, but their effect on the mortal realm is limited because they can't into linear time. The Bajorans may not be most interesting people around, but I think the Dominion and the Cardassians make up for it, especially in the way they all adapt and interact with each other. I know some don't like the military focus of the show, but I didn't mind. There isn't really more action in here than in any of the other shows. Cythereal posted:At least in the case where this was literally the process in Star Trek, it was a major plot point that this produced a short-lived and violently unstable biosphere that would quickly tear itself apart and the device became more commonly spoken of as a superweapon. Even without the unstability, Genesis could still wreck all sorts of hell on an already habitable world. I seem to remember that it would basically overwrite the local ecology. Doresh fucked around with this message at 21:47 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 21:42
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Doresh posted:Even without the unstability, Genesis could still wreck all sorts of hell on an already habitable world. I seem to remember that it would basically overwrite the local ecology. It would. There were a few books and video games that ran with the idea that Genesis was a planet-killer when used on an inhabited world and that the Federation tried very hard to bury the project's existence as a result while less friendly neighbors assumed it had always been intended as a WMD and generally tried to steal it or make their own.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:44
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Doresh posted:They offier felt overall more human and relatable. Especially that one time Q visited and got decked by Sisko because he has no time for an omnipotent jester on his station. Not to mention his amazing olde-timey moustache. 
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Jan 3, 2017 21:46
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I played Starfleet Command 2 when I was younger (and really enjoyed it) but was baffled to discover Star Fleet Battles was this entire insane alternate setting where everyone in the galaxy is super gung ho for war. Like, how the gently caress did that happen?
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Jan 3, 2017 21:46
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MollyMetroid posted:DS9 and Bab5 were a case of parallel evolution. One was not meant to torpedo the other. Thank you.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:46
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The theory is the Paramount execs did that, not the show runners, and that comes from JMS himself. He didn't pursue legal action because he didn't want to hurt either show. I never meant to say they spent their entire runs at odds but that Paramount really wanted to edge out the competition.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:53
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Night10194 posted:I played Starfleet Command 2 when I was younger (and really enjoyed it) but was baffled to discover Star Fleet Battles was this entire insane alternate setting where everyone in the galaxy is super gung ho for war. You acquire a weird version of the Star Trek license and essentially turn it into fanfiction. Also you never really liked Star Trek to begin with (because the way the bridge crew does all the work is stupid and unrealistic), so your fanfiction just uses the ship aesthetics and a few races. Cythereal posted:It would. There were a few books and video games that ran with the idea that Genesis was a planet-killer when used on an inhabited world and that the Federation tried very hard to bury the project's existence as a result while less friendly neighbors assumed it had always been intended as a WMD and generally tried to steal it or make their own. I think it says a lot about the Federation when "... also if you shoot it at a planet that is already Class M, it will kill everything!" wasn't considered an issue.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:54
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Doresh posted:I think it says a lot about the Federation when "... also if you shoot it at a planet that is already Class M, it will kill everything!" wasn't considered an issue. One of the big plot points about Genesis in the movies was that no one really knew what it would do and Starfleet insisted that it be tested on a desolate, uninhabited planet on the fringe of Federation space. When the Federation saw what Genesis did to a planet, along with the fact that it didn't really work for its intended purpose, they terminated the project.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:57
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Doresh posted:You acquire a weird version of the Star Trek license and essentially turn it into fanfiction. Also you never really liked Star Trek to begin with (because the way the bridge crew does all the work is stupid and unrealistic), so your fanfiction just uses the ship aesthetics and a few races. A license to everything available at that point, wasn't it? I know that a lot of the goofier poo poo like Klingons having stasis fields came from the animated series. Well, the earlier goofier poo poo. The later goofy poo poo is all their creation.
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Jan 3, 2017 21:58
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Night10194 posted:I played Starfleet Command 2 when I was younger (and really enjoyed it) but was baffled to discover Star Fleet Battles was this entire insane alternate setting where everyone in the galaxy is super gung ho for war. The guys in charge of the game are ex-military sci-fi geeks who've been doing this since 1979, and right-wing Republicans to boot. And, of course, it's a wargame. So this is a bizarro version of Star Trek that reflects the dry, cynical, pessimistic attitude of 70s military sci-fi rather than what most people would consider to be in the spirit of the Trek franchise.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:07
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Gene Roddenberry officially cut them adrift after they got started up by decanonizing everything that wasn't the show, films and the episode of the animated series where they go back in time and save kid Spock after accidentally killing him via butterfly effect. I can't help but feel that was motivated by some kind of Shining style vision of the Star Wars Expanded Universe. EDIT: Or that. Gene definitely said that stuff about canon, though. Kavak fucked around with this message at 22:13 on Jan 3, 2017 |
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Jan 3, 2017 22:11
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Bieeardo posted:A license to everything available at that point, wasn't it? I know that a lot of the goofier poo poo like Klingons having stasis fields came from the animated series. Well, the earlier goofier poo poo. The later goofy poo poo is all their creation. ADB, the company behind Star Fleet Battles, bought the rights back during the 70s when TOS and the animated series were all that existed. I also think they actually bought the rights via TOS's art team instead of Paramount, but the history is weird and confused. Nobody thought Trek would turn into such a juggernaut back then, so they got a really wide licence for a song. Then the Trek movies happened. Paramount sued ADB for breach of copyright...and lost. ADB produced their old agreement in court and Paramount were ordered to grant the company a licence in perpetuity. Paramount quietly vowed to never make that mistake again, and the licence they wrote was a viciously tightarsed, bitter and childish letter-of-the-law document that granted incredibly precise rights over tiny slices of the Trek setting. For example, ADB must always refer to Starfleet as "Star Fleet" with a space between the words. They only have the rights to the Original Series and Animated Series, and according to myth they can only ever refer to the Enterprise a limited number of times in the lifetime of the company. Do all that to a Trek superfan with a Libertarian streak, and allow the resulting nasty mess to steep in a grognard fanbase for 30 years. That's Star Fleet Battles. E;fb
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Jan 3, 2017 22:11
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Man I just liked the videogame because I could play as cheerful British fish people with tons of gods, 5 genders, and a fondness for aircraft carriers.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:17
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Kavak posted:He really is the best character of that era, the everyman hero to the super-duper Starfleet officers. He's just an average enlisted grease monkey and family man who's now part of events waaay over his head. And he helps save the Federation anyway. Also that part where technically speaking for most of the show he's a time traveler from an alternate future that ended up never happening. They never really brought that part up again, though.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:17
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Mors Rattus posted:Also that part where technically speaking for most of the show he's a time traveler from an alternate future that ended up never happening. It was only a few hours into the future, no big deal. Night10194 posted:Man I just liked the videogame because I could play as cheerful British fish people with tons of gods, 5 genders, and a fondness for aircraft carriers. Yeah, the Hydrans ruled.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:18
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Kavak posted:Yeah, the Hydrans ruled. I was a fan of playing as the ISC. Felt like a deconstructed Federation while TNG was still on the air, and they were so wonderfully smug. They're bad guys pretending to be good guys, know that you're not fooled, and love every second of it anyway.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:22
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Cythereal posted:I was a fan of playing as the ISC. Felt like a deconstructed Federation while TNG was still on the air, and they were so wonderfully smug. They're bad guys pretending to be good guys, know that you're not fooled, and love every second of it anyway. Their biggest difference from the Federation is that they lacked a Prime Directive, which going by some of TNG's dumber episodes would wrap around and make them the good guys.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:24
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Cythereal posted:I was a fan of playing as the ISC. Felt like a deconstructed Federation while TNG was still on the air, and they were so wonderfully smug. They're bad guys pretending to be good guys, know that you're not fooled, and love every second of it anyway. Also their ships were boss and plasma torpedoes ruled.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:27
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I've watched Star Trek II through IV tons of time as a kid so prepare for some  The Genesis device was developed independent of Starfleet. Carol Marcus runs Regula One on her own, and has to basically send a grant video to the Federation, which is how the Reliant becomes involved in finding a test planet. Right from the beginning Carol and Starfleet are aware that the device could be weaponized by using it on an inhabited planet. The Devise itself works as the plot requires. It's in III that we find out that the Genesis device is flawed because David used proto-matter in the matrix, which 1) sets up a cool finale of Kirk and Kruug fighting over a volcano and 2) explain how Spock's body regenerates and goes through being a couple of child and young actors before becoming Nemoy again.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:29
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Night10194 posted:Also their ships were boss and plasma torpedoes ruled. Not bad... for an outlaw.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:32
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Are the Hydrans entirely an invention of Starfleet Battles because they rocked.
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Jan 3, 2017 22:55
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I like the idea that there's a reason so many new aliens Starfleet encounters have a really douchey attitude: The Federation does stuff like make a terraforming gadget that, whoops, doubles as a planet cracker!Bieeardo posted:The Bajorans were as flat as any other Trek nasal appliance of the week, and they traded beating the poo poo out of Worf for simply making GBS threads all over O'Brien.
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Jan 3, 2017 23:23
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 Polaris RPG(2016) Part 2, Book 1, Chapter 1: The World of the Deep This chapter is subdivided in four parts: -History, starting with the aftermath of the apocalypse -Information on all the nations and cities in the game. At 50 pages, this sub chapter is longer than the other three put together. -An alphabetic list of world building titbits -The surface, the underground and outer space. Mainly serves as repository of hooks for splatbooks Chapter 1.1: History This chapter opens up with a small setting overview, going into a little bit more detail on what kind of environment the players can expect: Humanity suffered a huge setback, both from the apocalypse itself an radiation induced sterility that now affects 80% of the population and has been reduced to several small underwater states in constant conflict. Outside the main stations being fought over, pirates and raiders rule supreme. Players can be soldiers of one of these nations, mercenaries with a more loose allegiance or just plain adventurers doing stuff like solving mysteries, raiding forgotten ruins, founding settlements and getting into fights with pirates over territory and salvage. The hard life under the waves breeds hard men doing what they must in order to survive and paragons of morality will be few and far between, in conflicts between third parties, the players will rarely find themselves with a clear black or white choice but they must put their difference aside and unite against a common adversity if humanity is to survive. Dead end metaplot reference count: 2. Their equipment will likewise follow a similar theme of being a shadow of it's old self, consisting mostly of rust and duct tape with new, or better yet, recovered precursor technology, being a rare and precious thing. Not all hope is lost however and through battling against the odds they may yet topple an oppressive empire or rout a fleet of sadistic raiders, to the betterment of all humanity. Even further, the players may be the heroes to create a new order and start the next golden age. The final line is one I'll copy paste from the book: quote:All these elements and many others make up the backdrop I hate this text block. None of what it says about being humanity's new leader is supported anywhere in the rules. You start the game as a murderhobo you'll end the game as a better murderhobo. Even worse, all of this is only secondary the -~'* great mystery *'~- of wizard spells(and it's synonyms in parenthesis). The book will never explain how or what it is but it was important enough to name the whole game after it and everything you, the players, do is irrelevant compared to it and gently caress that. Also, dead end metaplot reference count: 3 Next up, some more fiction. We get two short quotes and a long one, one from Vulrick the Mad(a playtester, going by the dedications section) about humanity being born from the oceans and now coming back to them to die, which is not quite how evolution went but okay, we'll take it. After that is the long one, by a historian: Nobody knows how the cataclysm happened or what is was, but some speculate that either the Hegemony, the oldest and largest underwater nation, or the Cult of the Trident, the wizard-run United Nations, have records dating back to that time. Either way, the result is that the surface is now covered in everlasting lightning storms, tornadoes and radiation, animals are now monstrous parasite carriers, trees are now predatory and will ensnare pay with their branches and smaller plants have learned to move and hunt. Humanity fled beneath the waves and this is where we are now with the warring states and pirates. The next quote is another one of those that needs to be seen in full: quote:“What do those half-witted primates know about  ...oh. I can't tell if this is a meta joke about Tessier being the one who made the setting or if he seriously declared his self insert to be the closest thing the game has to a deity. Either way, Cyrull's "Web" will never be mentioned again. Dead end metaplot reference count: 4  Although a few pieces are repeated, the art in the book is pretty nice for the budget it was made on, at least if you like the colour blue. Let's move on to the actual meat of this section, history The Beginning (? to 0) After the cataclysm, humanity was about to die out due to inability to keep their population numbers up while hiding under the sea. The Geneticians came with their secrets of the Fluid, a means of breathing underwater and many others inventions including exo-respirators, oxygen filtering backpacks for dolphins and whales. This is important because as we'll later discover, those marine mammals are wizards now. No explanation is ever given for that but they will have spells once we get to the bestiary. With the Geneticians in charge humanity conquered most of the ocean and built great cities everywhere with their high technology. Outposts were established underground, in select places of the surface, and on the moon and Mars. Then something went wrong and a civil war erupted, destroying most of humanity, again. The rebel faction emerged victorious, declared the Geneticians to be a great evil and created the Azure Alliance. The Golden Age (0 to 150) Humanity is down to less than a billion people for the second time and the Geneticians remotely wiped all computers around the world on their way out, leaving the world without the means to produce new Fluid, Hybrids or hyperalloys, the latter two being merman mutants and shape-shifting nanite metal. The Alliance spends most of this time reverse engineering these technologies while humanity rebuilds it's shattered cities once again, rediscovering most of them and making it as far as the moon before the third apocalypse happens. Yes, again. The End of a Dream(150 to 250) In the year 150, the Burrowers, an species of not-orcs, attack from underground, swiftly destroying many cities built into the seabed and oceanic ridges. What's worse, the surviving humans in floating installations not connected to the earth are rapidly turning sterile. A great breeding project is undertaken to create as many scientists as possible to reverse it but the social unrest caused by this fractures the Azure Alliance into warring micro states with piracy and banditry reaching an all time high. In 250, the Alliance is formally dissolved. The New Order(251 to 400) I am irrationally annoyed by the inconsistency of the first year of this era not being the last year of the previous on like with the others. Anyway, the world continues to be poo poo for a century or so until 361 when the Hatteras community, one of the splinter groups from the Azure Alliance discovers a forgotten cache of Genetician weapons, including a ship made out of hyperalloy and the means to produce Techno-Hybrids. Everybody declares war on them for this but are unable to defeat their technologically advanced opponents. Nine years later in 370, Hatteras has conquered most of it's enemies and proclaims a new state, the Hegemony. The Hegemony restarted the Azure Alliance's controlled breeding program and began colonizing the ocean for a third time, which brought them all in conflict with yet more underwater nations, most of which were swiftly crushed except for the Red League, which had been the Hatteras' greatest enemy since they first discovered the Genetician depot. In 375, Admiral Piotr Devrac from the Coral Republic attempted to broker a peace between the Hegemony and the grand coalition of everybody they pissed off with their expansionism, led by the Red League. He suggest a meeting in Equinox, the city where the peace loving Cult of the Trident resides. He gets ridiculed out of court by both sides. Next, the Cult of the Trident themselves declared that they'd destroy any kingdom refusing to cooperate. After sharing a hearthy laugh, the Hegemony and the Red League declare a truce and send their fleets towards the upstart third party. The city is hidden in what the game calls a "heat flow", tube shaped irregular streams of water impenetrable to sonar and causing strange electromagnetic interference. Equinox is located at the point where all these streams intersect. After entering it's invisibility field, the armada find the city surrounded by dolphins and whales. Before they have a chance to report this peculiarity, the wizards in the Cult completely annihilate the entire fleet with their Polaris powers. Now without a navy, the Hegemony and the Red League are forced to accept Devrac's plan for a meeting, which would later be called the Admiral's Council. At the Council, the Cult sets forth some ground rules for all states to follow: -Any scientific breakthrough in the field of genetics must be sent to the Genetic High Council, a neutral scientific organisation in Equinox with representatives of all other states -The Hegemony must share their hyperalloy technology with the other states -No fighting near underwater farms -Equinox must always remain neutral -All states must colonize as much of the ocean as they can -All states must contribute to a space program and all space stations are neutral territory -Underwater pollution is forbidden -Marine mammals must be protected -The Cult of the Trident gets permanent free passage in every city and outpost -Anybody with the gift of wizardry must be handed over to the Cult -Each state pays a monthly tax in fertile individuals to the Cult -In return, the Cult will provide everybody else with Fluid and Geno-Hybrids -All this is enforced by the Fellowship of the Watchers, an organisation paid for by the Council's member states and it's staff selected by the Cult The next 25 years or so, Equinox diplomats prevent wars from going apocalyptic again and the world settles into a new status quo, one dominated by plotting and scheming instead of all out war, under the somewhat hands-off leadership of the wizard UN. With the ban on the wholesale slaughter of troublemakers, many large states find it hard to keep their territory under control and several minor nations declare independence. Side note: The map later in the book with territorial zones of control shows no two states sharing a border.The book also makes a note here that the moon gets recolonized again in 498, nearly a hundred years after this era is supposed to end. Players can't go to space anyway. Modern Times(400 to 565) This is the era that you'll be playing in. Equinox prevents border skirmishes from escalating into somebody getting nuked and most conflict between major powers is resolved with cloak and dagger. The dangers in the depth are more immediate though with many pirates and raiders abound, deadly creatures lurking everywhere and the massive Burrower armies standing at the ready to attack anybody foolish enough to wander underground. In a more organised fashion there are the Black Sun Fellowship, a totalitarian splinter group of the Cult of the Trident(they're literal underwater nazi wizards), The Fellowship of the Deep, a terror organisation who wish to eradicate all of humanity as part of it's apocalyptic prophecies(yes, they put loving daesh in the game) and the Leviathan Community, a secretive society that lives in a remote trench together with their whale wizard friends that will attack all outsiders. Recent Events(566 to 569) Here we go again with the inconsistent dating scheme! This section mainly talks about the Hegemony militarising again in incredibly vague "some whisper that the Patriarchs may be preparing a new super weapon" form. Because the upcoming nation write-ups, starting with the Hegemony, are basically the same text with far less outsider perspective waffling, I'll be skipping most of it. The most important parts are the re-appearance of Azure Alliance ships, crewed by parties unknown(dead end metaplot reference count: 5) and the unexplainable wholesale destruction of a Hegemony community(6), Contact with a new non-human species living in the deep called the Ternasets, a new Plague affecting the Coral Republic, dead bodies found inexplicably aged at high speeds found in commercial harbours, two new nations declaring independence, Amaziona and Rhodia, rumours about a hidden breakthrough dealing with the sterility crisis, a megacorp called Cortex doing megacorp things and the name "Conscience" spooking all major powers(7) Next up: Chapter 1.2: Civilizations of the Deep
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Jan 3, 2017 23:45
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I still have a soft spot for Voyager since it was one of the few shows that both my dad and I enjoyed and would watch together every week. I agree that the first few seasons are bad on the whole but it's better once they get rid of the plot tumor that is the Nelix/Kes/Paris love triangle and let Picardo actually loving act.
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Jan 4, 2017 00:02
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