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OOC Freespacer OOC Discussion

First post in the Recollections thread! I hope you like it! Also, I may have found someone else interested in the 'spacers. I feel kind of bad saying it, but what happened kind of... gives us a lot of strong thematics to work with.

Do you think we should come up with special names for what happened? I'm thinking we might want to come up with a term for the whole invasion, one for the fall of the lighthouse (since that would be noticed by pretty much all motherships) and maybe one for the Yamataian declaration of all 'spacers as enemies of the state.

Anyway, progress progress!
 
the war itself has been called the Genocide this far. I've been toying with the idea of calling it the Second War (as opposed to the quasi-mythical "First War", the one where the Deodrah, the proto-freespacers, overthrew their slavers and fled to space), but I think that Genocide works fine. It's what it has been called OOC, too.

The fall of the Lighthouse could be called, metaphorically, the Darkening, which could later be referred as the period of time that goes from the fall of the Lighthouse (and the disruption of the core of Polysentience) until the day in which Polysentience will return to 100% of its usual effectiveness, sometime in the near future.

I don't think that there should be a name for the Yamataian declaration: after all, it's a Yamatai matter and few 'spacers are likely to know, or to care. But since then, in news posts and alike, I've had the Freespacers rename Yamatai "The Fascist Empire of Yamatai", both out of spite and because, learning more about Yamatai, they realized that it's an "empire" in the real sense of the word, that is, a nation where a single person detains power.
This concept, obviously, is so ridiculously alien to the anarchic, communist, collectivist Freespacers that it's almost as if the United States of America today were ruled with absolute power by the god-king Xerxes as portrayed by Frank Miller's 300 and corresponding film, complete with gold and opulence, harem of freaks, merciless conquering and pillaging of Canada and Mexico, and war campaigns in Europe... to make a funny comparison. :D

We can make up other names as we go along. For example, if the proposal of a gathering point in Nep space is approved, that point could be known with some fancy name and Freespacers might leave there a shrine or some other kind of memorial.
 
Oooh, the Darkening! I really like that! Though, one thing I was wondering about... is the slaver race from 'spacer history named? I've been doing some research on historically oppressed groups and religions, and I was thinking that it might not be a bad idea to incorporate some elements of Rastafarian ideology to the Freespacers, considering its roots in slavery culture and emphasis on equality and freedom.

Anyway, hopefully I'll have a nice little thing to add to the wiki, and maybe something helpful for the forums soon, too!
 
I don't know if they would want to remember their slavers...though "The Art of Never Again" should have some details on the 'Spacer pre-history (if someone fills it in, at least).

We should probably keep a log somewhere easily accessible on the forum of the additions and changes made to the Free State's racial and organizational information pool (i.e., wiki pages added or changed that do not have to do with individual characters but the Free State as a whole). That way Freespacer players (especially the more knowledgeable/immersed ones like Della) could keep tabs on what changes and additions are being made without having to comb through the wiki every night. It can get hard keeping track of a lot of pages : ) The log can be its own thread, perhaps, with just a summery of the change/addition made. In the case of additions, they should be double-checked for links out and links able to be made to those new articles.

Edit:
"After The Genocide" is an excellent piece of writing, from all of you. Makes me want to make a proper Freespacer character!
 
You HAVE a proper Freespacer character :D

Anyway, I'm thinking about giving the whole freespacer section of the wiki a good do-over, both updating information and adding recap pages and better linking.

So, well, please say what you think should be changed, updated or stuff. Not the more obvious stuff (changing numbers and stuff) but the stuff i might miss or not think about it.

Oh, and also I would love to see new Freespacer wiki pages, with a lot more starships and technical and cultural details :D


Crux:

The slaver race is never named. I assume it is so far in the past to be almost mythology, and that their name suffered a sort of Damnatio Memoriae perhaps.
It is only known that they had a large, ancient empire, and the biological ancestors of the freespacers were their slaves. Then, they revolted, a bloody uprising ensued, and a guerrilla war was fought, with an emphasis on non-conventional tactics, sabotage, misinformation.
Finally, the Freespacers manage to free themselves, flying to the stars and never putting foot on a planet ever since, save for essential necessities like natural resources.

As for the log, We can open another post once we start editing things, but i don't think it's really needed...
 
This is a thread for links to Freespacer / Free State wiki articles, as well as updates about changes to the Freespacer wiki articles. Make sure to check in whenever there's a new post so you can see all the new content being added!

Freespacer General Information

The Art of Never Again - UPDATED, but keep updated with new quotes as you come up with them

Creating a Freespacer - UPDATED

The Free State - UPDATED

Freespacers 6/13/08

Freespacer Starship Guidelines - UPDATED

Freespacer Terminology - WORK IN PROGRESS, feel free to add

Freespacer Organizations

Freespacer Fleets 6/12/08

Guild of Cyberempathy 6/12/08

Hacker Cult 6/12/08

Opportunists Social Club 6/12/08

Wired Rovers 6/12/08

Freespacer Life and Culture

Mecha-Druidism - WORK IN PROGRESS

Nekomata - still pondering if accept or reject this

Opportunists Social Club Contract Guide 6/12/08

Polysentience 6/12/08

Type One Freespacer 6/12/08

Type Two Freespacer 6/12/08

Type Three Freespacer 6/12/08

Type Four Freespacer 6/12/08

Freespacer Technology

Starlight Cells - UPDATED

Difference Engine 6/12/08

Divine Comedy (Ship) 6/12/08

Entropy's Shroud Electronic Warfare Suite 6/12/08

"Finagle's Revenge" Anti-Armor Recoilless Rifle 6/12/08

Free State Weapons Systems 6/12/08

The Grinder 6/12/08

Gypsy (Space Ship) 6/12/08

Inertialess Drive 6/12/08

Junkers 6/12/08

Ley Lines Gate Network 6/12/08

Militant (Automaton) 6/12/08

Mindware System 6/12/08

Nonvolitional Units [Stub] 6/12/08

Phantasm Gunship 6/12/08

Polysentience 6/12/08

Rift Generator 6/12/08

Savant Tactical/Guidance Construct 6/12/08

Synthetic Intelligence 6/12/08

Traveller Shuttle 6/12/08

Teminus Intervention System - must be finished

Voidwalker Suit 6/12/08

Way of the Failover 6/12/08

Freespacer Locations

Freehold Factory 6/12/08 (Needs Updating!)

The Great Lighthouse 6/13/08 (Needs Updating!)

Halna 6/12/08

Journey's End 6/12/08

Null and Void 6/12/08

Relay Moon 6/12/08

Other Freespacer-Related Articles

4th Fleet Operations (Yamatai Star Army) 6/12/08

Cirrus Research Station 6/12/08

Not Yet Approved Articles / Articles Under Construction

DIoN-Free State Protectorate Treaty 6/12/08

Freespacer Terminology 8/9/08

Nekomata 8/8/08

Rift Energy Sail 7/11/08
 
I'm just making a note, but I think we need to research the UX-21 (Freespacer Reserve) in the First Expeditionary Fleet.

Considering the comments made in an earlier post about Freespacers finding "Paradise" under Yamataian rule, I think we should be quick to ask for the Freespacer Reserve to be clarified, and possibly ask for a public discussion on it. While it's not like every single Freespacer would rather die than work with the Yamataians, I don't think we'd have a very difficult time making this Freespacer Reserve seem problematic, especially since Freespacers have been officially declared Enemies of the State in Yamatai. I should note that UX-21 is the planet Wes described as an ideal place for the Freespacers in Yamataian captivity to be resettled.

While we don't have any say in whether the Freespacers are made to go to UX-21 by Yamatai or are coerced into doing this or that, I do think we can have a strong case to challenge their willing obedience to Yamataian rule, on cultural, political, and humanitarian grounds, if not ethnic ones.
 
The definition of any "planet" as ideal for a race that has lived in space for centuries is suspicious at best.
As is the definition of any kind of captivity as "paradise" for a wandering, nomadic race that consider personal freedom to be the most important value in their culture.
Add the "severed from the hive mind" angle and you get a pretty bad scenario.

Given the habitual selfless streak of Freespacers, I think that most of them would choose suicide or suicidal attempts of sabotage over patiently submitting to Yamataian rule.
Especially once they understand that they're being used as test subjects to break Polysentience.

As soon as I'll have finished fixing the freespacer stuff I have by my hands right now, I'll talk to Wes about that.
 
Re: Freespacer Wiki Article Update Thread

I'd mark the Protectorate Treaty as "unapproved, waiting revision". It wasn't passed by the Neps and rereading it I'm... thinking it doesn't make much sense.

Weren't freespacer supposed to be anarchists unbound by rules and unaware of bureaucracy? This treaty is far too formal to even be understood by most 'spacers.

We also need a freespacer starship submission guide, since their ships are radically different from all other ships in design.

No deflector shields or force fields of any kind, no high-powered energy discharge weapons unless the ship is a warship specifically designed for it, no technology requiring massive amounts of energy, no energy source more complex than nuclear fusion. All ships must have a solar sail and be built to have a lifespan of anything from fifty years (the smallest crafts) to indefinite (motherships are expected to just work forever), and no, or extremely long, refit cycles.
Thick armor with Way of the Failover design philosophy, and everything is decentralized to a point that cutting in two a ship just leaves you with two smaller ships: redundant engines, redundant control centers, redundant power sources, redundant FTL drives, redundant everything. No single component must be essential, and any single component that breaks should be able to be replaced "on the field": this means that everything must be extremely simple, sturdy and low-tech.

On average, hull DRs should be low, between 4 and 6, but ships should have a scary, almost unnatural capacity of talking hits and just refusing to blow up from sheer ignorance.

The only (relatively) "hi-tech" systems should be sensors, ECM, ECCM and communications.

As for speed... now that after contact with the Neps Freespacers are readapting their widespread use of FTL tech to their own ships (and reverse-engineering FTL drives...

I'll have to make a "freespacer starship speeds" like there are starship speeds pages for nepleslia and yamatai. Of course, average speeds are going to be much, much lower, because freespacers are more interested in reduced fuel consumption, efficiency and "minimum buck for maximum bang" than pure speed. And they have Ley Lines, anyway, so even non-FTL ships lingering around a portal or moving together with a more massive starship which has a portal large enough for them to fit through can redeploy over long distances.

(note to self: do a writeup for an average Rift Generator ship, basically a redeployable portal)
 
I see mass nuclear explosions. All spacers have little nuke reactors, and I would have assumed that once Polysentience was removed and all hope of escape was removed, they would initiate overloads or meltdowns of those reactors.
 
Re: Freespacer Wiki Article Update Thread

Della said:
In the meanwhile, I've done this:

https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=fr ... guidelines

Please add and/or modify and/or comment. I want every Freespacer player's opinion, if possible, before I submit it for approval.
Click to expand...

I did a few grammatical edits here and there, but for the most part, the article is really just spot on! Great job, Della! I also added another paragraph to the Communications section. I'm not sure if it belongs in a Starship Creation post, so if it seems out of place, I can try moving it somewhere else. Maybe the Hacker Cult or just the main Freespacer wiki entry.

I also changed the last sentence in the Technology Level to be a little bit more fleshed out.
 
I don't think a single freespacer has enough fissile material on him to go critical. They're not reactors, just generators. But they have enough material that they COULD assemble a weapon. Or just, you know, let themselves die.
 
MissingNo said:
I see mass nuclear explosions. All spacers have little nuke reactors, and I would have assumed that once Polysentience was removed and all hope of escape was removed, they would initiate overloads or meltdowns of those reactors.
Click to expand...

Radioisotope generators. Just enough to keep the body warm and make them about 50% more radioactive than a normal person. At best, you could make dirty bombs for area denial, but synthoids aren't affected as much by it anyway.
 
If an article that was approved is edited, does it need to be resubmitted for approval? I'm just looking over some of the 'spacer articles and wondering whether I might want to try putting something in here or there, but I wouldn't necessarily want to if it meant having to get the whole thing approved again.
 
It depends on how big a change it is. Minor details and a more in-depth, detailed analysis doesn't require re-submission, but fundamentally altering a concept does.

Also, should we keep the "deodrah" name as a purely historical one for the proto-freespacers of the past, or should we keep it to refer to the biological component of the Freespacer population?
 
Also, Jessica has suggested the creation of a "vocabulary" page with freespacer-specific terminology, words and expressions.
I of course expect freespacer language to be steeped in self-referential jokes and incomprehensible memes :D

If there's nothing else, I'm checking the page again and then submitting it for approval.
 
Della, I've made my character, and posted her up. So yeah, if you'd be kind enough to give her a look I'd really appreciate it. :)
 
On the topic of what to do with Deodrah, I think it should officially refer to the proto-freespacers, but also have informal uses as a description for biological 'spacers, as well as being a synonym for the 'spacer ethnicity and maybe a general term for one who rebels against oppression. "The nyankers need to level their INT and go Deodrah on their YMT overlords."

Making notes on possible 'spacer slang... will want copious back up. My hope is to one day have posts that are totally incomprehensible to those unfamiliar with the 'spacer terminology.
 
...that doesn't sound like a desirable goal. We have to assume that intra-Spacer communications are obscure IC to non-spacer listeners, but without making them OOC obscure to non-freespacer players.
We want more 'Spacer players, not less. :D

Despite this, I lol'd at your post of 'spacer comms about the Yamatai and think that it's exactly how everyone else reads them.
I like to imagine the people from SAINT headdesking repeatedly trying to figure out what's being said.

Oh, and I talked to Wes more clearly about the prisoners.

They have been left free to go and their captured ships have been given back. I'll make a news post about this.

Edit: What is a "secret dick move"?

Re-edit: Nevermind, I realized that i probably don't want to know. Scary how Polysentience is, fundamentally, 4chan, only a million times larger and more convoluted.
 
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