Idea: The Wave of Humanity

Well as for the Qaktoro, aka the Hidden Sun Clan, yes at present they are an NPC faction, but kept to a single star system presently. I have always maintained that I would like someday for them to become a PC faction. Its one of the reasons I have worked so hard to detail them. While I have had a few people ask about them, there has not been enough interest to launch a plot.

Actually I can see refugees running away from largel factions. There are two types of defenses. Get really well armed or get out of enemys sight. Really the logic of this is that NMX would not take interesting in area that was not properly explored yet anyway. Not when they have full tentacles with Yamatai, Nepleslia and UOC. So it makes sense that refugees run away from the was which mean leacing larger factions.

Other thing I would like to say is that I like this idea. BUT. I wouldn't like to see a faction grow out of this. This should be just colonies here and there for GMs to have fun with. Technicaly I can imagine GMs putting their head together and saying here, here and ehre are colonies. And then GM says okay I am going to get my crew explore this rock. And then he can think of what is on that rock. Is there a hidden lair of pirates raiding colonies of refugees? Is there a brigade of Nepleslian dezerters who just had enough of war? Or simple colony of Jiyuuians trying to make their living of their planer na be left alone.

Posibilities are many and hey, it is not like there is no enough place for Llrani, Ottyo and whatever platypus-like aliens we can think off. And let's say some small race should get player base and start of somewhere. THis would be nice place and colonies would give GM of said race a lot things to do. So not like it really matter but I am in favor of this.

Eh, isn't this going to create preceedence and historical evidence for new non-DIoN Nepleslian and human-but-not-human factions?

slowpoke.jpg, I know.

ShotJon said:

Actually I can see refugees running away from largel factions. There are two types of defenses. Get really well armed or get out of enemys sight. Really the logic of this is that NMX would not take interesting in area that was not properly explored yet anyway. Not when they have full tentacles with Yamatai, Nepleslia and UOC. So it makes sense that refugees run away from the was which mean leacing larger factions.

Click to expand...

A Yam/Nep separatist/refugee/deserter mini-plot might be interesting, just so long as we aren't looking at the birth of another faction.

Actually, something that I think would be kinda cool. What if there is a colony of refugees from a planet that the NMX conquered. They feel betrayed that their home faction abandoned them, and now, from their unknown base planet, they launch terrorist attacks against that faction as vengeance for leaving the refugees for dead.

Throwing my hat in with the "offshoot of Nepleslia" crowd. Having these new colonists be deserters, pacifists, and runaways from the Nepleslian (and possibly UOC) factions would make more sense; humans-from-nowhere leave too many questions with too much potential for plot holds requiring retcons later.

Why would humans, running from the NMX, run _toward_ the source of the NMX? Are the NMX herding them toward the main conflict area for a reason? How did the NMX find them to start with? Why are the NMX attacking them? Why would the NMX suddenly leave the refugee humans alone once those humans make their colonies on the unexplored worlds? How could the humans stand up to the NMX if they have lower tech than Nepleslia?

I say it's a trap.

And someone had a point that, if this becomes a playable faction then we'll need that answered and that could cause retcons. Also a trap.

I guess a better way of describing my idea is that Nepleslians and similar colonial-descended humans are likely to be found anywhere a GM thinks it's convenient or interesting. This has already been something we've used in the past and this proposal simply provides a clear green light for it. The colonies GMs "discover" (create) would not be major factions, and the option to use other species is there as well, but in general it takes a lot less work when you can avoid species submissions and increase the ability to relate to the discovered NPCs by using humans.

Encouragement to spawn human settlements at a GM's need isn't the "there are humans everywhere" thing I was concerned about. I can get behind that.

As long as its used in moderation, and that any new settlement actually contributes something to the roleplay (and that'd be tied to plots, really). Having every other guy go and make a NTSE submission of his own version of humans in SARP is not something I want to see.

Even if that were the case, if an FM abandons a faction it's a lot easier to say the group of humans broke up and was absorbed into other human factions (like the Reds were) than to explain an alien race's disappearance.

Which would you rather see more of:

- Random humans with different cultures, agendas, and governments
- The above, but they have wrinkly noses, etc.

The point is that the former is much easier and the result is the same for RP purposes. The vast majority of factions that are "aliens" tend to be basically human anyway, and they tend to lease loose ends when their creators vanish due to IRL stuff.

I can get behind it too. It would make things easier to build a plot.

The other question I do have is simple. what if some of these "Humans" actual descendants of old earth(Rather then Nepeleslian Diaspora)? Granted any stories on old earth and what happened to it would be more like legends and myths then solid history, but it may be a way to simply wrap up the question we all ask.

I believe that's one can of worms we'd like not to touch on in SARP.

The Nerimians were supposedly from Earth. It didn't seem to be that big of a deal. Earth in SARP might actually not matter, to the point of it being desirable to not even be referenced if possible.

Historically speaking, the humans that Nepleslians descended from were fleeing from the old Black Claw Empire after the liberation wars, roughly two thousand years before YE 01. No 'definite' fate has been written regarding what happened to the old Black Claw Empire and because of the refugees putting so much distance behind them there was no way to find out what happened since. Any future developments is pretty much open to whichever GM wants to go ahead and try to tackle that.

According to the current star map, the BCE is in the direction of galactic southeast, the point marked 'Certain Doom.' Why is it marked that way? Possibly a hold over of the old refugees fear of what they had fled. The BCE had been defeated but there was so much turmoil going on back there that the humans dispatched a secret fleet to escape to ensure humanity doesn't become enslaved again by what ever faction became dominant. Already these humans had forgotten their origins during captivity so there isn't any real knowledge of any 'old earth' so to speak. We can speculate and even play it up a bit with the references to culture and languages but there's no officially canonical link to a 'Earth.'

Anyways, after two thousand years and so many current issues to occupy their time, its not unfeasible that people would've forgotten a lot of what happened before: the fleeing, the BCE, the wars, etc. I mean, there's been a LOT of wars fought, broken only be a few scant centuries of peace. So again, even the history mentioned isn't really too common a topic except maybe to some particularly curious scholars who would have a devil of a time trying to piece it all back together. There ARE signs though, but no one really pays them any attention anymore.

SO while I would say it is feasible for there to be some 'offshoot' factions of humans out there that have nothing to do with the original BCE refugees who populate Nepleslia today. It is possible they could pop up on some random frontier planet. The purpose would be up to the GM who wants to write it up. If any of these humans do surface they could also just as easily not even remember where they originally came from either. Think about how hard it is for us to fully piece together history from just a few hundred years ago. Even with super sci-fi tech, things still break down, knowledge still gets lost, and people forget stuff.

They don't necessarily need to be running from the NMX. Heck they wouldn't even have to be on the big scene, just a backwards colony without the means to really expand and making do as best they can. Maybe the last encounter they had was with the Vordachibean or some other menace they encountered that isn't a galactic presence. Heck maybe they just fight against space native critters that only has beast like intelligence.

That's just my thoughts. I figured I could give you another reason why some offshoot human colony might be discovered in the frontier. Oh and these humans don't even have to be fully human either. The BCE had subjugated countless alien worlds. The humans Nepleslians descended from were not even purely 'human' in some cases. There were trace mixtures of aliens caused by interbreeding. Nowadays those traces can be considered 'bred out' since it's been a long time but I recall the original description mentioned that so I had to work it in some how to explain what we had. In the case of these colonies they could have any kind of alien trait which would make them into a whole other species of human.

Heck, for all we know the Abwehrans could be descended from the humans of the BCE. Any of these alien humanoids could be from the BCE. Just because one 'official' fleet of refugees was sent out doesn't mean there weren't others who decided to get the heck out of Dodge at some other point in history. The fact that they're all out here could simply be because they knew of the 'official' refugees and decided they would have a better chance going that way. Or they could have gone a different direction, gotten lost, and meandered their way over here. Hey it's a possibility.

Speaking of the black claw empire- I wonder if it's possible that after their defeat, the humans were able to coexist peacefully, even if only in small numbers. It'd be interesting to see colonies with both Humans and the species that formerly made up the BCE.

I guess I should write up some species info on the BCSE races at some point. In my ancient days when the SARP's predecessor was my bedroom toy collection, the BSCE emperor was played by a Pound Puppy toy (seriously!) so the species would probably be that concept morphed into some sort of large, badass werewolf/dog thing.

Now the BSCE race being brought back would be interesting. You could do splinter colonies perhaps?

Dude, you know what I just thought of that would be epically cool? If there was an RPed historic flashback thread. Like, there's a scientist or historian of some sort that uncovers ancient ruins on some uncharted planet. He goes down to look through the ruins, and as he discovers things, instead of explaining what the discovery is, it flashes back to explain it.

EX: Some historian finds some ruins of a palace on some planet in the "Certain Doom" area. As he walks into the main chamber, it flashes back to a rebel group storming the palace and killing the royal family. Or he finds a text about the founding of the empire, and it flashes back to RP out what the text would describe.

I agree with Gabriel's sentiment. It would flesh out the true history behind SARP. Uncovering some of the mysteries behind the origins of human-looking creatures and how they came to be is something that should belong to the curious minds of the current century.

Surely Nepleslians must wonder why biological Freespacers look so similar. Same with Elysians and Yamataians, and with the Iromakuanhe and Abwehrans, etc... There would definitely be some sort of investment into rediscovering ancient ruins, if not for the purpose of unveiling history, then at least to find ancient super weapons for the war efforts. I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet, and ever since I joined SARP I always wondered if the Nepleslians and Yamataians wondered where Elysians, Lorath and Abwehrans came from, considering their extremely close similarities.

Wouldn't they study, compare and contrast their DNAs to see if were are any genetic strains that might prove they both originate from the same species? Wouldn't they at least consider wondering how it was that they evolved parallel to one another with almost the same DNA structure, and yet are so different?

Anyway, this thread isn't about that, so I digress (though linking what I previously said with the thread topic in the process).This kind of relates to Warhammer 40k, in the way that the story is pretty much the same (except without the Warp and the Warp Storms and the AI rebelling and the evil elf-killing demon god). Huge human empire rules over most of the universe, gets shot down for whatever reason, and the remaining humans end up fending for their own.

The difference here being that in Warhammer 40k, the Emperor unified the humans back into an Imperium. In SARP, this doesn't happen (or, at least, not yet~). The result is a spread out population of independent, developing human (or pseudo-humans, depending on the local circumstances) colonies which eventually grow into huge space empires (ex. Yamatai, Nepleslia) or not so huge (ex. Iromakuanhe, Abwehrans, Elysians) or maybe even just continue being nomads (ex. Freespacers). The colonies we're discussing haven't even neared that stage yet, and were probably refugee ships of very few, under-educated (or perhaps simply not having the knowledge of how to recreate the weapons and vehicles of their time) individuals which grew across the span of a planet.

To conclude, I guess I like the idea of having stranded human colonies if it's to further historical insight of the setting, and to rectify and understand further the similarities between pseudo-human and human races to the point of providing a clear reason why they are similar and how they wound up where they did.

Somebody told me the Abwehrans were native to the sector.

Also, if there are colonies, you could work the knowledge of larger empire into their social and cultural beliefs. Similar to the middle ages and midevil ages, when folk tales and epics were at their prime, so too could be tales of the greater empires. Naturally, the original refugees that settled an area would know of their origins, and pass this information down to their younger generations. However, as the information is passed down through the generations, depending on the technology available and the tools required to record the history in writing, these tales would slowly turn into folk tales, myths, and legends. A similar example could be the Chronicles of Narnia series: Over the course of several hundred years, the talking animals (as seen in movie 1, book 2) mostly didn't talk, and over the course of several thousand more years, no animals talked, and the prospect of a talking animal was seen as fantastic and surreal, even though it was the truth. So too could the origins of these colonies be presented as myths and folk tales, even though they were real, the idea of a larger civilization outside of their own planet is just such an unfathomable concept that the people stopped seeing the tales as history and more as fiction.

Yeah exactly. If you ever read the Dragonriders of Pern novels you'd notice how the people completely forgot they had even colonized their planet in the first place!

I have to admit, when I wrote the history outline I had hoped people would go and write stories about the events that happened. You know, give it some life and flesh out the stories. I only wrote an outline so that the other writers could do more with it. I didn't want it so LOCKED in that no one had freedom but at the same time I didn't want people to just scratch their heads and wonder 'so how DID the SARP story get started.' I mean, Wes gave me a good bit of freedom to write this and I didn't want to make it so rigid that others couldn't see it and run with it some more.

Think of all the 'canon' Star Wars prehistory that exists and all the stories that the authors have written to enrich that world. Its the same thing where everyone can have some freedom to write something and now has a platform to start with.

And this just covers the era within this system. Yeah, what happened to the BCE? What if OTHER people from the BCE escaped BEFORE the liberation wars? Maybe that's how these species got here before the Nepleslian ancestors. Or they ARE native. I dunno, but there's just so many possibilities it creates for such epicness that we could spin a lifetime of stories from this.