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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 3:25 am
Table of Contents:
The Terran Solar Confederation
The Nihilans Within the TSC
Precision
Lamond
Break from the Confederation
Present Situation
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 10:33 pm
The Terran Solar Confederation
While the Nihilan forces are no longer part of the TSC, they were at one point, and so a brief explanation of their roots is necessary.
The Terran Solar Confederation is an immense multi-system human nation as yet unknown to most other forces. Their core worlds are fairly well established, and they extend much further unofficially in frontier worlds. The Confederation itself is broken down into seven (formerly eight) distinct factions: Odessa, Rouyn, Ibene, Xian-Nubesini, Anadyr, Khanakin, and Senogaea. Each of these factions themselves consists of many systems with many worlds with many countries with many provinces. In other words, the TSC is like a United Nations composed entirely of groups that are themselves United Nations of United Nations. It's a slow, clumsy bureaucracy, but by god it hurts if it ever can focus itself.
Within the Guild what this means is that the Energy Beings related to this branch of humans isn't particularly powerful. Each one is very weak on their own, and have bonded together to protect themselves from outside threats while they strengthen their own positions. There is some in-fighting, but mostly they can get along well enough - especially now that the scale is so massive. With a few billion, it's possible to feel cramped. There're now more than one trillion registered members of the Confederation, and more that they can pull energy from beyond that.
The TSC is not connected spatially, due to their use of wormholes to travel. As such, it's entirely possible to be near a few of their worlds from various factions without encountering the main bulk of any of their forces for several more light-years. Their initial attempts at colonization involved shooting large ARKs into space, and hoping they found somewhere to live. Many even travelled through open wormholes, leading to some human colonies established prior to setting out, in some senses. There's even debate about whether Earth itself was so colonized, but if wormholes ever had temporal abilities, they've been gone since humanity got to them intentionall, making such claims spurious at best.
The TSC has been in a state of semi-war with two other nearby races, the Essaran and Mazon, as well as dealing with their own people in the form of a civil war, the Ionian Revolution. There's been some non-violent contact with other races such as the Che Van, but humanity's outlook (in this area, at least) runs to the idea of "shoot suspicious enemies first, find out if we just did something stupid once we're not in immediate danger".
It's also worth it to mention that they've built many of their technological advances of late on discoveries of ancient weapons caches discovered in "their" territory. It's unknown who the people developing the technology in question was, but most of it suits humans well.
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Posted: Wed Apr 29, 2009 11:27 pm
The Nihilans Within the TSC
The majority of wars conducted by the TSC were smaller affairs, more border skirmishes than anything else, and even between factions they never were worth much expenditure from unaffected worlds to stop. However, especially with larger extra-national conflicts, there were a number of fleets assigned to various Generals and their underlings, all of whom were considered among the best in the TSC at what they did.
Then there was Rakiza Noran. While never more than a fitting member for the border skirmishes, she fought her way into the official chain of command, largely by being so violent and petty that the havoc she wreaked upon their enemies helped turn the tide of many battles. While she never held official rank, she came to command her own fleet, and a good deal of respect. One reason she never held an official rank was the cult.
Rakiza was an expert at getting people to follow her lead. As such, there were a number of people with frightening levels of devotion. Rather than fear or shun them, she used them to promote her own power. While small, she began a movement to seize some degree of power for herself, and this is what the Nihilans were.
They worked everywhere. More than even the Ionian Revolutionaries - although many members of one could have belonged to the other - they infiltrated every level of the TSC they could. This gave her progressively more and more power, and more opportunities to spread this influence further.
The Nihilans broke away in part when she adopted the unofficial (and powerless) title of the High Admiral Lady Nihil. While still part of the TSC at this time, the power was consolidated into one region of space, where she did the majority of her work, that being amongst border worlds who were beyond regular TSC support.
As a semi-separate body from the main navy the Nihilans were capable of doing work that the Navy couldn't. They funded special operations, participated in brutal raids, and defended undefensible regions in the name of their Lady. While they put off many of their allies by their fanatical devotion, their adept tactics and willingness to go to any length for victory earned them a solid reputation and place with the workings of the TSC.
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Posted: Thu Apr 30, 2009 8:45 pm
Precision
The Precision Research and Development Laboratories were founded by Dalton Weiss, along with Rakiza Noran and several other powers within the TSC. Rakiza was brought into the project as an up and coming scientist and psychic by Dalton The main goal was to find ways of increasing and harnessing psychic powers latent in humanity, as well as dispelling some of the myths about what psychic powers could or could not do, and reducing the stigma against such folk.
In practice, they did many experiments on other humans, some of them quite inhumane. A great deal of the research was at least partially autonomous, and the more cruel acts were committed under the secretive eyes of Dalton's rivals within the labs, cutting him out of the command structure.
Eventually, Dalton found out and was forced to resign in the process of the discovery. Rakiza stayed on, still under his distant guidance, and volunteered for some experimentation now that Precision had been "humanitized". The process imbued her with a great deal of power, but also damaged her heavily. It took a great deal of physical and mental therapy for her to recover, and even then she was significantly different.
She remained for some time, until she moved out beyond the organization, taking many with her. The organization later collapsed, and many of those experimented upon later went on to join her, though no where near a majority of them.
Those "improved" by Precision are left with a greatly enhanced sense of self and improved ability to manipulate psychic powers. This alteration - and the levels of stress and trauma it induces - varies between individuals, depending obth on their personalities and the methods of enhancement used. The ultimate method used involves draining the power of Energy Beings to improve the human's own power, and trauma levels may also have had to do with that.
Rakiza is one of only three to be Fully Actualized, with the other two having stopped their growth at fairly frightening levels (one with the potential to be temporarily omniscient, the other with the ability to revise reality in small ways - effectively going back in time very very short distances and changing the way things go). Rakiza is still growing, though she hasn't manifested any abilities beyond the usual, just remarkable power. In truth, one ability she possesses seems to be that she continues to draw upon the Energy Beings, and while she doesn't seem aware of them, is starting to draw from her followers in a manner consistent with them. As this is subconscious, she isn't able to do anything much with the power yet.
After leaving Precision, Rakiza and her mentor Dalton began to raise an army, with the intention of taking back Precision. After its collapse, this military was repurposed to defence within the TSC, as was mentioned previously.
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Posted: Tue May 26, 2009 1:06 am
Lamond
The planet Lamond was discovered by a team of explorers including Dalton Weiss. The planet was heavily guarded by automated defences, and the group barely made it out with scant technologies, many of which were used in the construction of the Precision program.
Later, when the Nihilans became a power in their own right, Dalton and Rakiza had the planet invaded properly - by their own forces. They took control of the automated defences and all the wonders of the planet.
Lamond seems to have been a technology repository for an unknown culture. The planet contains a wide variety of climates, and seems to have been engineered in such a way as to render at least one of them habitable to any given form of life. There are also a large number of research stations with extensive notes - once translated - on many given technologies and projects.
Lamond served as Rakiza's secret base of operations during her time with the TSC, allowing her to construct the Vertereich out of the ancient technologies and defence systems, as well as several other ships. Furthermore, it provided the basis of her soldier enhancements and the many leaps in technology her forces made - bringing them up to the pinnacle of the TSC and beyond, in some areas.
Now that they are no longer part of the TSC, Lamond is even more important. It provides the basis of food for all the fleet, though many ships have hydroponics bays and gardens to grow their own food as well. It serves as a shipyard, manufacturing plant, research center and habitat for Rakiza's people.
Given its importance, it is interesting to note that it is often left seemingly undefended. There is only one visible defence, a mobile space "station" known as the Zeronan. However, there are many other defences - passive and active both - in place over the planet and on its surface, not least of which is the mighty Hydra defence platform resting in the planet's ring.
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