Thoughts on Military Doctrines

Before we can discuss the details of a military technological framework, we should try to understand the logic behind why they use the weapons and vehicles that they use.  This means understanding how a particular military force fights, how it combines its various elements into a cohesive whole.  It also means understanding something about the culture behind the army, why they fight, and what their flaws are.

I did some work on Imperial military doctrines, or typical Rebel tactics, and these proved quite popular, if the views are to be believed, so I thought I’d revisit some of the thought process behind how I came up with those, and some of the thoughts that I have when creating my own military forces, both so that I can clarify my own thoughts but also, more importantly, to offer you some inspiration if you’re creating your own military force.

Military Doctrine

“Military doctrine is the expression of how military forces contribute to campaigns, major operations, battles, and engagements… Doctrine links theory, history, experimentation, and practice… Doctrine provides the military with an authoritative body of statements on how military forces conduct operations and provides a common lexicon for use by military planners and leaders” -Military Doctrine, Wikipedia

A military doctrine is ultimately howa military fights, but it’s often grounded in whya military fights and with whata military fights and against who the military fights. Thus, in creating a military doctrine, I suggest trying to answer the following questions:

• Why does the military fight?

Armies fight for a reason. The Roman Empire fought mostly to bring home wealth to its elites and to bring prestige to the general (in part because he could bestow booty upon his supporters and army), thus it treated war as an opportunity to pillage and an excuse for a “triumph,” treating the defeated as conquered. Nazi Germany sought lebensraum, room for its Germancitizens to flourish and grow, thus it focused on territorial acquisition and, ah, removing the indigenous people; the collateral damage of total war, given such an objective, might not be a bug but a feature! Modern America focuses on (among other things) maintaining the flow of international trade and the capitalistic order of the world (so long as it serves its primary interests); thus it tries to engage in small-scale warfare that focus on ensuring trade continues to flow; blowing up a country and its industry would damage trade and profitability and this would harm American interests as well, thus it tries to avoid collateral damage (the fact that this serves its humanitarian goals is a welcome benefit as well). Why does a particular Psi-Wars military fight? What do they seek to achieve?

• What resources are available?

A military will certainly be shaped by what it can bring to the table. Obviously, the Roman Empire would have eagerly grabbed any modern technology they could, but none of this was available, so they had to make do with their own technology. Less absurdexamples might focus on what local technology, natural resources or human resources are available. In the modern world, civilians are increasingly uninterested in joining their national military as these tend to be difficult and low-paying work compared to other opportunities, but such nations typically have access to phenomenal industrial capabilities, and thus replace man with machine where possible. An insurgent force, by contrast, often lacks raw industrial capability and thus must use hand-me-downs, donations or whatever they can cobble together themselves but, provided they’re a popular insurgency, they tend to have access to considerable amounts of unskilled people, sometimes with fanatical devotion. The use of a “suicide bomber” might be seen as a pointless waste of human resources to an industrial army (just use artillery) but might be an effective tactic of a resource-strapped insurgency flush with devoted would-be soldiers who lack the military training to engage in a more effective strategy.

• Who does the military primarily battle?

The nature of your opponents shape the sort of combat you engage in. Modern war is often fight asymmetrically, with a massive industrial-scale military vs a much smaller insurgency, and this fact shapes how both armies fight: the industrial military can afford to focus more on anti-rifle weaponry and quick response tactics, while the insurgency needs to develop tactics that will cut off supply lines and turn the local populace against the foreign industrial army. The wars of the 18th-19th century were often fought by aristocratic powers who knew that diplomatic circumstances could easily change and who relied on trade with one another, and so necessarily treated war as a means of settling a diplomatic dispute between nobles, rather than a total war between two industrial bases.

• Where does your warfare primarily take place?

The shape of the battlefield definitely changes the nature of the military. In the modern world, most military forces are build around local defense, and thus are shaped to the land. A few “super-powers” need the ability to project their power around the world, and thus they need to make use of dynamic forces that can fight on any sort of terrain, and can be deployed relatively quickly to anywhere in the world.

Once you answer these questions, you can more easily answer the howof war, which is the restof military doctrine. Answering whymight determine whether the army focuses on limited war, total war, genocide or onwinning popular support. Answering whatmight determine what sort of gear its soldiers get and what quality. Answering who determines what sort of specialists the military employs, what sorts of tactics it expects to need to counteract. Answering wheredetermines what sort of mobility, if any, the military needs.

Signature Strategies

I like to use “Signature Moves” when designing my martial art styles because, by defining exactly how your style fights, you can more easily choose what skills, perks and techniques your style needs based on how it actually fights. When defining a doctrine, we can determine “signature strategies” for similar reasons and with similar results, only we replace “skills, perks and techniques” with gear, vehicles and spaceships.

A signature strategy represents how a military goes about accomplishing a specificgoal. These might be large scale (“How do I conquer a planet?”) or small scale (“How force my opponent out of cover”) but be careful with how much detail you go into, because that’s a pretty deep rabbit hole (one can literally write books…). Not every military doctrine will answer every question. Some military forces prefer to give their soldiers a great deal of leeway, while others are rigid down to defining each action a soldier will undertake. Some strategic questions aren’t even worth answering because the military does not concern itself with such a question (if one does not field a space navy, one does not need to worry about conquering any planet other than one’s own).

Nonetheless, most military forces need to deal with similar questions, and while their answers may differ, I present a list of questions and general topics to get you started on your own military doctrine.

Grand Strategy

Any military force that covers multiple star systems needs to concern itself with how to maintain the space it already controls, how to expand the space it controls, and how to reconquer any space it has lost. These tend to be sweeping, large-scale questions that concern themselves with fleet movements, diplomacy and industrial priorities.

How to Attack a Star System

Whatever one’s offensive goals, generally one should seek to gain “orbital supremacy” first, because all future campaign objectives will depend on not having one’s ships routinely attacked. First, your fleet will drop out of hyperspace, and once it has done so, will likely alert all defenders. This means the fleet will need to move into action as quickly as possible to defend itself and eliminate attackers. If you have primarily short-ranged craft, or slow craft, you might want to know the exact coordinates of the enemy defenses and drop out of hyperspace right on top of them. If you have long-ranged or quick craft, you might want to drop out of hyperspace at a distance and slowly move in. Hitting multiple fleets can allow you to divide your enemy’s forces, but it can also risk your defeat in detail.

Once you’ve won the space battle, you’ll want some means to ensure that no “hidden” enemies remain (perhaps lurking in debris fields or in a nebula), that your enemy cannot launch new ships or, if you can do neither, that you can easily respond to any such attacks, even if distracted by other matters.

How to Conquer/Liberate a Planet

A primary concern for an expanding empire is how to take new worlds. Generally, this involves setting up orbital supremacy, and then once that’s achieved, you’ll need some means of attacking and taking the planet. Generally, this involves moving ground troops from orbit down to the planet, but doing so risks exposure to attack, either from remaining space forces (which is why one seeks orbital dominance) or from planetary defenses. Thus, one needs to prevent such defenses from crippling the orbital drops of ground troops. Once planet-side, those troops need to exert power over the rest of the planet, ideally via taking points of power that they can use to extend influence over the rest of the world.

Ultimately, this tactic depends on the importance of influence. No space navy can hope to carry sufficient forces to control the entire populace of a planet. They can, however, dominate key points, such as the central planetary government and the main starport, as well as eliminating major points of resistance. They can also induce the planet to surrender, either by simple request (typical during a liberation, or offering generous terms of surrender to an outmatched world) or through sheer intimidation; rarely, one may just glass everything that resists from orbit, but most empires seek control, rather than elimination. That said, whatthe empire seeks to control may vary and this may impact what it focuses its forces on, and what it chooses to destroy from orbit.

How to Defend a World

Unless a world wishes to be easy pickings for a conqueror, it should have some means of defense. Defense of a world consists of hardening its orbit, defending against orbital bombardment and orbital dropships, and maintaining “legitimacy” so the population does not rise against you but, ideally, rises against the attacker. In the cases of defending orbit or the planet itself, this often involves early warning detection networks, fortresses, planetary cannons or planetary shields, quick-launch platforms, and quick-response navies that can respond to an attack from several systems away by jumping in to lend assistance.

Maintaining legitimacy can be very important. Rebellion can result in an invader being seen as a liberator, and after your defensive forces have been eliminated, the people simply laying down their arms and accepting the attacker as their new ruler. Worse, it can result in the people rising up against the owner and casting them from the world. Rule can be maintained through love or fear, through prosperity or the threat of poverty.

Maintaining Borders and Alliances

The best defense against an attack is ensuring that nobody wishes to attack you at all! If an enemy gets the sense that you have too much defense, or will successfully retaliate, he may choose to pick on a lesser opponent. Similarly, if the status quo serves his interests, he will not seek to attack you. Successful empires use diplomacy as an extension of war: they prevent their enemy from uncovering any weaknesses, regularly patrol or “show the flag” to impress their enemies with the size of their fleet, or shoo away raiders or probing scouting parties.

Diplomats serve a useful purpose in maintaining lines of communication and ensuring that all needs of all parties are well known. If a rival empire becomes increasingly desperate for a particular resource that you have in abundance, you can either harden your border against them and exploit that weakness by forcing them to attack your strongest defenses, or you can simply give them the resource, or at least offer a good deal on it and thus eliminate any desire they might have to attack you.

Maintaining good alliances means you won’t be attacked without warning, or you won’t find that several enemies gang up on you. Such a thing might not be necessary if you’re the biggest dog on the block, but it’s vital for smaller powers.

Much of this is actually handled by spies and security, but the military plays its part as well via patrols and tours.

Logistics and Leave

Space logistics mainly involves repairs, food and refueling. In practice, most capital ships will carry months of food, while corvettes might carry weeks and fighters days, if any at all. Fuel tends to be rated for number of “jumps,” with short-ranged craft rated for 1-2 shunts (allowing a trip to a target and, perhaps, back) while long-ranged craft might be rated for up 5 shunts (allowing for a jump, reorientation, a second jump, and back, with a spare jump as an option). Empires will want some means of resupplying their ships, either in home ports, or “on the run” if they have extensive “lines.”

Planetary forces need to keep their soldiers fed, their vehicles fueled and repaired. In the case of defenders, large stockpiles might be sufficient, but interstellar attackers will need to bring their supplies with them, and provide those supplies to ground-based troops if the planetary military campaign endures for any length of time. More than that, people need to relax, and planets make excellent points for leave, but this means that soldiers and spacers will be interacting with the local populace, picking up local diseases and accidentally revealingsecret plans to local entertainers. What sorts of policies does the military force have when it comes to leave and relaxation?

Space Tactics

The core question about space combat tactics, and all forms of tactics, is how the military uses combined arms to defeat its foes. Capital ships, corvettes and starfighters each bring their own advantages to the situation and require their own tools to defeat. The ideal strategy pulls an opponent in two conflicting directions, forcing his opponent into an impossible situation that makes survival impossible, while not allowing himself to be brought into the same situation.

Some special situations include:

Communication: If a situation goes badly, if a fleet needs assistance or needs to report some new circumstances, how exactly does it do that? FTL communication has sharply limited range; this might be sufficient for “small scale” empires, but for larger factions, they’ll need some sort of relay system, or some extremely powerful forms of communication. Both represent potential targets for attackers.

Raiding and Evasion: A hit-and-run force might want to slip past enemy detection grids to launch daring planetary raids or space-based ambushes to defeat more dangerous targets. These tend to be preferred tactics of rebels and pirate fleets. The other side of the token is how a fleet generallyrespondsto such tactics.

Boarding and Capture: a starship is a valuable target and often contains useful assets, such as persons of interest, enemy plans or cargo. Pirates will often seek to capture a ship, but so might military fleets. Military forces that favorsuch an attack should define what their preferred approach is.

Retreat: Escaping from a battle gone sour typically involves little more than charging the hyperspace engines and charting a route. Even so, the time involved can mean the difference between life and death and in the case of very large fleets, everyone running in different directions can leave a fleet scattered and vulnerable to being defeated in detail. How does your fleet handle these particular issues?

Orbital Assault: When a fleet prepares to engage a planet, what sorts of forces does it deploy to the surface? How does it handle the defenses, be it a present fleet or anti-orbital defenses? And how does it manage to land sufficient forces to achieve the objectives it sets out to achieve?

Ground Tactics

As with space combat, most of ground tactics will focus on how best to combine the various elements of their forces to create the “impossible situation” that forces their enemy to defeat. Ground tactics varies from space tactics in that it inevitably circles around the primary form of infantry: the basic rifleman, which gives everyone a starting point around which to build their tactics. Beyond that, ground combat involves balancing infantry with vehicles and the persistent threat of aerial (or orbital) attack.

Special situations include:

Urban Assault and Defense: An urban environment is the most common point of attack, as seizing a capital city or starport are usually primary goals for defeating a world. Given the proliferation of cover and tight corridors, as well as the dangers of collateral damage or enemy hiding among the populace, how does the military force find their targets, avoid ambush and pin their enemy down to defeat them and seize vital points. Once taken, what sort of defenses does the military force deploy, and how to they win the local population to their side?

Wilderness Combat: Not all worlds are heavily urbanized, and not all parts of a world are easily accessible by starship. Worse, once a world’s capital and starport has been conquered, that does not necessarily mean that the world has been placated. The wild, untamed expanses of the world might house guerrilla factions, secret laboratories or factories, or entire settlements might lose themselves in the mountains, jungles or oceans of the world. Each world has its own unique terrain types, and the defenders of that world will often adapt their tactics to those terrains, while attackers will need some means of handling unusual terrain.

Reconnaissance and Commando Raids: Whether in the wilderness or in the heart of a city, orbital dominance cannot provide a perfect view of the unfolding war, and defenders often find themselves cut off from such assets. Ground forces often need to find a way to figure out what’s going on even without an eye in the sky. Similarly, lightning raids at high value targets, like communication platforms or power plants, can damage the enemy out of proportion of the number of lives lost in the fighting. Guerrilla fighters often excel at such tactics, and conquerors will need some means of countering them. Infiltration and insertion of your own commandos can also undermine the powers of the world and prepare it for a full-scale invasion.

Handling the Wounded: Destroyed vehicles can be repaired or replaced, but the flesh of soldiers is not so easily mended, and lost veterans not easily replaced. Great losses of life send shockwaves through an army’s morale and a population’s will to fight: nobody wants to see thousand and thousands of caskets of a generation’s best and brightest. Some factions will have soldiers to spare and might send human wave attacks against their enemy, heedless of losses, especially if they have some sort of iron control over their forces and their populace. Other armies might focus on preventing harm in the first place by ensuring every soldier is well armored. When wounds inevitably happen, how does the military force handle them? What sort of facilities does it deploy? How sever a wound is necessary to send someone home?

Doctrinal Flaws

“You go to war with the army you have” -Donald Rumsfeld

Nobody is perfect, and when creating a fictional military, it’s often tempting to discuss just how awesomethey are, but we need to understand how flawedthey are too. These flaws can create dramatic tension if the hero is a member of that military force, and a vulnerability one can exploit if attacking. Flaws can also shape a military doctrine, especially if its top officers are aware of said flaws. They also lend an element of authenticity as no matter how elite, how epic and how legendary a military force is, it still has challenges to overcome.

These don’t have to be explicitly described in your doctrine, of course, but it may well inform some of the approaches the military force takes to war. For example, a military that is resource starved might fixate on securing resources first and foremost, and even train specialists in that role!

Lack of Resources

This is probably the most common flaw every military faces, because nobody has infinite resources. Even the US military, which is by far and away the best funded and best equipped military in the world, complains about a lack of resources. Every military must run up against an eventual shortage of something, and this ultimately becomes its limiting factor. For example, in WW2, Japan’s military effort was largely defined by its lack of resources. Its aggressive stance had to do with its lack of access to vital resources like high quality steel and oil. The peculiar and specific designs of many of its engines of war, such as the Mitsubishi Zero, had to do with overcoming those specific deficiencies. Japan tried to fight an efficient war, as its resource pool was dwarfed by the resources available to the US.

Typical resources military forces generally need about include:

• Raw materials for the manufacture of weapons (especially specialized or rare resources, such as some rare unobtanium for a specific superweapon)
• Industrial capacity to make said weapons
• Fuel for the engines of war (Hyperium is explicitly included to be just such a possible bottleneck)
• Manpower with sufficient skill, training and physical fortitude for war.

Politics

In any polity that has multiple voices influencing policy, some of those voices may come into conflict with one another, paralyzing the faction’s ability to wage war. This might be two sub-factions who are simply at odds either with the idea of war (pacifists) or at odds with the success of the other sub-faction (the blues cannot stand it if the reds win the war, but would be happy to win the war if they were in power). Often, this has more to do with local versus global interests. A politician representing a planet might push to have the manufacture of particular engines of war on his planet not because his planet is the best for it, but because it funnels cash and business to his world which provides wealth, jobs and kickbacks for his constituents.

Politicians also use war as a means to expand their own influence. A skilled general may seek to start a war that he’s sure he can win simply to gain glory for himself and thus gain influence and political standing. Likewise, a political opponent of a general might undermine the war effort for no other reason than to see the commanding officer fail and be disgraced. Politicians often divert attention from their own corruption or internal problems by focusing the population on an external threat, whether or not that threat is real, and whether or not the faction can effectively battle that “threat.”

Bureaucratic conflict within the halls of power can also resemble politics. Certain aspects of the government or military can become accustomed to a certain way of operating, or find that they benefit from a status quo, and resist all calls to change. The United States Airforce often sabotages ideas it does not like, such as the A-10 style of close support craft, or the concept of a “Space Force,” because these either do not work the way they prefer to operate, or because the creation of a new branch of the military might threaten their own influence and power.

The Will to Fight

“War, huh, yeah

What is it good for

Absolutely nothing” – War, by Edwin Starr

War is ultimately an expression of will. Both sides want something, one side acts to take it and tells the other “What are you going to do about it?” and the ultimate expression of what they intend to do about it is war. How far is one willing to go to acquire a particular resource or see that their culture or community are safe from harm? Some people are willing to do whatever it takes, while others are less willing, being more interested in other things (such as survival or their own personal well-being, even if it comes at the expense of others).

A military force needs recruits, it needs political and economic backing, and it needs its own soldiers to maintain morale. The faltering of any of these things can result in a collapsing war effort. Doctrines that do not account for this risk defeat. For example, critics largely argue that the US defeat in Vietnam was largely one of collapsing will to fight; the apologists of that war like to point the finger at specific actors, as though a single activist or media personality could turn an entire population against a war, but note that how the US military portrays itself in anti-guerrilla conflicts has changed in the decades since, suggesting that US military doctrines have adapted to this need to maintain the will to fight.

Most guerrilla campaigns and revolutions by weaker powers vs stronger ones rely on defeating morale rather than attrition, because in a war of attrition, they will almost always lose.

Outdated Doctrines

“Generals are condemned to fight the last war” -Proverb

A war can bring with it enormous innovations and changes as an entire faction gears itself to fight that specific war and learns the lessons of that war. The next war might not be fought the same way, but the faction may find itself caught off-guard by this fact. World Wars I & II both faces this difficulty, with many tactical choices and military weapons outdated before the first shot was fired (especially the use of battleships instead of carriers). A military force might find itself grounded in the past, built around a particular “glory day,” and unable, whether through its culture, its lack of imagination or a lack of needed resources, to bring the right tools to the problem. Instead, it must use outdated techniques and methods to try to defeat a foe, and hopes that the rest of its advantages are sufficient to overwhelm this one problem.

Arrogance

“Blood Will Tell” -Proverb

Some military forces simply expectto win. They assume their opponents are inept savages, or fundamentally inferior, or that whatever advantages they have will assure them of victory, and they become complacent. They use the same tactics over and over again, issue largely ceremonial orders, and then turn their attentions to more “important” matters. Typically, this arrogance is grounded in reality, as an entire military force is rarely delusional, and the military force tends to win engagement after engagement… until they don’t. The sudden defeat will often act as a blueprint to the enemies of the doctrine, and the collapse of power can be sudden as the weakness of the enemy is revealed. The most famous example of this is likely the Russo-Japanese war and the concept of a “paper tiger,” where the “weak” Japanese defeated the “mighty” Russian empire largely in a single knock-out blow that crippled the latter’s ability to wage war in the Pacific and thus left the Japanese able to do what they wanted.

Sometimes this “arrogance” is an intentional facade. A weak force may know that it is weak, but project an air of confidence to dissuade others from attacking. They rely on old stories (the Spartans after Thermopylae, Russians and “Never engage in a land war in Asia”, the Persian “Immortal” and their legends of invincibility) and the perception of invincibility to dissuade the enemy from attacking, knowing full well that if an enemy attacks, the military can do precious little to stop it. This is often a common trait among weaker dictatorships.

It should be noted that fanatical forces often betray a certain arrogance. They believe utterly in their side, and they often assume they cannot lose because God, ideology or the “march of history” is on their side and they have such a fundamental advantage over their “wrong-thinking” rivals that they cannot possibly lose. This creates a very brittle sort of morale, where every victory snowballs into more and more will to fight, but even a single defeat can force people to question their faith, or to turn on one another in search of the “secret traitor,” or the unbeliever, or something else they can use as a scapegoat for their defeat, which often results in good officers being thrown under the bus.

Objective Mismatch

A military force is typically designed for a purpose, and that purpose does not always match the war being fought. In the modern world, we often see dictatorships rapidly collapse under the attack of a Western Power, and we often attribute this to superior weaponry and training, despite the fact that many dictatorships purchase Western weapons and have extensive training. However, the objectives of most Third World dictatorships is to prevent internalconflict, rather than externalconflict. They prove extremely adept at killing rebels, often better than Western powers are, but unable to stand up to conventional attack. Similarly, a massive, conventional military may find itself poorly suited for the door-to-door, “winning hearts and minds” sort of conflict necessary to defeat an insurgency. This isn’t necessarily a flaw of the military forces: they may well excel at what they were designed to do, but it may be a problem of circumstances, or of those who shape the policies of war.

Building the Psi-Wars Technological Frameworks

“I understand why you’re revisiting this technological stuff, I just miss working on the setting” – Maverick (I think; and paraphrased, because it was ages ago, which illustrates how much of a problem it is)

“I think its time for a new playtest.” – The Secret Council, ominously

I am unhappy. I had wanted to round out a final playtest and a new version of the Dreadnought, but in the latter case, it felt redundant based on what I knew was coming up, and the former felt unfinishable, because I would have to use “Generic everything.” In fact, the reason I came up with the Generic Fleet was to do a playtest, but even as I found myself sitting down to write it, the words wouldn’t come, and I think I know why: it’s because I’m unhappy. I am unhappy because Maverick is right, and that sort of thing is way more fun. I am unhappy because my mind swims with alternate races and lost houses and Alexian secrets. I am unhappy because I know you want to see those things and I watch interest dwindle on my discord and my patreon.

It is very important that a writer be happy. Sure, he can be stressed, push to his limits and freaking out, but he should be enjoying what he’s doing, or the words will stop flowing. Creativity requiresan element of play, as they are deeply bound to one another! If it feels like homework, then, perhaps you shouldn’t do it! Yes, eventually you need to get it done, but pain (and boredom, etc) are indicators of a problem, and perhaps we can solve that problem.

There’s a reason I’ve done Iteration 7 the way I have, and it boils down to dissatisfaction with GURPS Spaceships as a catchall for vehicles. We don’t have Vehicles 4e, and I must say, this journey has showed me a lot, and provided a great deal of useful assets I need to move forward with this, and now that we have them, let’s move forward, shall we?

I want to make December my “Framework” month, not in the bland “Let’s talk about technology in an abstract way” but concrete material that you, as a Psi-Wars player, can use, and I want it to reflect the setting, so we’ll kill two birds with one stone: we’ll build a gear catalog and develop our setting at the same time! Though let’s be honest, this will take more than a month, but let’s see where this takes us!

The Roadmap

As for how to build a framework, I invite you to check out the following posts:

• A Setting Design Manifesto
• The Ultratech Framework Series

Most of our core elements in the Ultra-Tech Framework have been set up, and so we don’t need to revisit them. Now, we need to tackle the task of coming up with like 50 ships and 50 guns and 50 bits of personal gear and a mess of robots, which seems like a daunting task, but my setting manifesto explains how to break it up into smaller pieces. I wish to draw your attention to rules 2, 3, 4 and 5.

Rule 3: The Setting Fractal

Rule 3 is probably the most critical: the easiest way to break this down is to look at the fractal pattern of the setting, and we already know what that is. We have our core conflictbetween the Alliance and the Empire, and then we have the rest of Alien Kind. For our first, core run, we’re going to stop and focus in on the Alliance and the Empire, on humanity itself, because we haven’t yet discussed aliens, and when we do, that seems a good time to bring up alien technological frameworks.

However, we can dive deeper into the Alliance and the Empire. The Empire itself is fairly uniform, but we might break it up into periods: the Old “Leto Daijin” period, when the Empire was still the military arm of the old Federation and fighting a war against the Great Galactic Threat, the current era of war against the Alliance, and the “future era,” the experimental tech that’s just around the corner, which emphasizes the Empire as innovator.

For the Alliance, we couldlook at each House, but I would argue that this is a step too deep already, and assumessomething, which is to say that the Alliance isthe Aristocracy and it is not. The Alliance is all the varied factions arrayed against the Empire. That is, we’re talking about humanity in terms of “the Empire” vs “Everyone else,” at least when it comes to technological frameworks.

One thing that irritates me in sci-fi settings is when all Aliens are alike (“All Klingons are honorable warriors”) and, worse, when humans are this way (“All humans are charismatic, heroic and liberal-minded!”). One easy way to get around that is to break down a race (humanity, in this case) into sub-groups, to expand their part of the fractal. We in the modern world already do this, thinking in terms of ethnic groups, but I want to break up modern ethnic understanding and push the reader to lump the humanity of the setting into different sorts of “thematic buckets” to give us several different ways to picture what humans might be like and, thus, several different ways to picture their technology.

Maradon: These are the heirs to the galaxy, the rulers of the defeated Galactic Federation and the would-be rulers of the Alliance. They are humanity-as-space-fantasy, with elegant nobles, space princesses, space knights, great orbital fortresses, Dune-inspired houses that once bowed to a feminine order of “witches” called the Akashic order. I think when the average reader thinks of the Psi-Wars alliance, they picture the Maradon. In Star Wars, Leia Organa, Mon Mothma and probably Lando Calrissian would have been of Maradon extraction.

Shinjurai: The technologists of the setting, whose Neo-Rationalism ostensibly serves as the ideological foundations of the modern Empire, they once ruled pockets of the Galaxy and the foundations of their civilization gave rise to the Cybernetic Union. They are humanity-as-cyberpunk, with cyborg punks and strange robotic religions and devoted logicians. There are few such characters in Star Wars, though Lobot might fight the bill, as might General Greivous; instead, they represent a mashing of other genres into Star Wars, and include characters like John Preston from Equilibrium, Clara from Killjoys, and Kanjiklub from the Force Awakens.

Westerly: The common man of the setting, they can be found scattered across the stars, living simple lives and primarily wishes to be left alone; they are the most diverse of the forms of humanity, and worry about survival more than galactic politics. They are humanity as space-Western, with varied and simple religions (from Shepherdism to shamanism to True Communion) and simple and effective technologies. They are asteroid miners, farmers, survivalists, smugglers and gunslingers. In Star Wars, the Skywalker line is probably Westerly, as is Han Solo; outside of Star Wars, we have most of the crew of the Serenity, and we have the Fremen of Dune.

I find it easier to come up with some corporations, give them some fluff and assign them equipment modifiers that they give most of their gear. I then use these corporations kinda like character lens to differentiate my gear to be easier and quicker then doing it case by case (though don’t be afraid to mix methods). In effect they become Corporate Lens. -The Ryujin, Brand Loyalty

We can break down our gear first by human ethnic group/theme: what does Maradonian spaceships look like; what does Westerly spaceships look like, etc. I would propose further do to this along the lines of manufacturingcorporations. Each ethnic group and the design philosophies they stand for can be exemplified by a handful of corporations, each with their own specific themes. We can designthe equipment around those themes, but we can also arbitrarily give them benefits, as described in GURB’s Brand Loyalty article, or the “Gun Cult” sidebar on page 39 of GURPS Gun Fu(“The blasters and vehicles of Not-Kalashnikov are just more robust, with +1 to HT or Malf, just because. Everyone knows that!”). By having a few corporations, we also give the GM and players a few names to toss around and more setting elements to play with.

We can, and maybe should, dive into other frameworks and lost pieces of technology, such as alien frameworks, or the equipment of True Communion, but we might save that for a later time, as the gear here, for these factions, is the most foundational gear of the setting.

Rule 4: Themes

So, we have the rough fractal breakdown: we want some gear for each Ethnicity and the themes they represent. We’ll need to think of those themes, of course, but we can break down our material even further by creating another axis on which we think of our gear.

Of course, we already have several subsets of gear:

• Spaceships
• Vehicles
• Personal Gear
• Robots
• Enhancements
• Infrastructure

The first three are self-explanatory. Robots are something easily lost in the shuffle, but someone somewhere has to be making these robots, and it’s thus part of the technological framework. Enhancements represent things like Cybernetics or other purchasable upgrades, and I would argue that these tend to be setting concerns more than something we need to design: we might want to know who creates what particular set of cybernetics so we can put a name in front of it, but beyond that it’s not a major concern. Infrastructure fills a similar niche: we need to have hospitals and weather satellites and power plants and factories, but we worry about them more as setting elements than something the players will directly use.

We also have several broader themes to concern ourselves with:

• Military: what the wars are fought with
• Security and Infiltration gear: what special ops, criminals and cops use
• Civilian: what the guy on the street uses
• Special/Magical: the gear a faction uses to power its psychic abilities and other secret conspiracies.

These sort of fall into what various characters will do, or what the main conflicts of the setting are. Military and Security and probably the most important, while civilian will mix the two and serve as a backdrop for the first two: a criminal might use a civilian car, or a rebel in a military conflict might use a civilian blaster. The special/magical is like Enhancements: it tends to be unique and special and likely not worth an entire discussion on its own, but is worth remembering.

So, for example we might start with the (Military) (Spaceships) of the (Maradon). Each of these elements will have their own subsets: Capital Ships (which might be broken down into Carriers, Battleships, etc), Corvettes (which might be broken down into escort corvettes, torpedo corvettes, etc), and so on. Once you’ve got the whole complex map built out, it’s not especially difficult to just start plugging ships in, though you needn’t fill every gap.

Rule 2: Keep it Simple

Now that we have our fractal and themes (and fractals of themes), we must endeavor to keep it simple. I think it’s obvious that when looking at just one thematic group (Maradon) with just one aspect (military spaceships) that you can dive deeper and deeper into each set. I would suggest that we limit ourselves: given that the patterns here are sufficiently obvious that a GM can easily see where he can insert his own, we only need to draw in broad lines. So, if we’re talking the military spaceshipsof each group, I would argue we need:

• 0-3 Capital ships per group
• 0-3 corvettes per group
• 0-3 fighters per group

And then we stop. That’s up to 9 military ships per ethnic group plus 9 military ships for the empire, plus up to 9 “spy/security” ships per ethnic group and 9 “spy/security” ships for the empire, and 9 civilian ships per ethnic group and 9 civilian ships for the Empire. That’s already 108 potential spaceships, which is a bigdesign space, and thus we shouldn’ttry to fill in every little gap. 50 human ships would already be plenty, and that means we’re almost certainly not going to have 3 in every category (do we need 3 different Westerly capital ships? Probably not!)

I would like to add one additional thing into the mix as a call-out to Rule 1: We need to know our target audience, and one thing I’ve noticed with mytarget audience is that you guys like specifics. You like named characters, which probably means you like named ships, so we’ll come up with a handful of signature ships per faction, no more than 2-3.

Rule 5: Steal Like an Artist

Where do we get our ships? We’ll look in two major places. The first, obviously, is that we’ll steal from existing material. Obviously we’ll use Star Wars, but we have other sources as well, from the real world to other sci-fi (like the fighters of Cowboy Bebop or the corvettes of Firefly or the capital ships of Battlefleet Gothic). The second is that we’ll stop and think about the reasonsbehind our fighters.

When I created the Military Doctrines of the Empire, I set off something of a firestorm, as well as when I discussed the tactics of rebellion. I’d like to revisit each of these before I dive into the infrastructure of each. Why does the Empire have dreadnoughts? Why don’t the Westerly? The answer lies in how each faction views war, or security and stealth, or their civilian concerns. As we stop and contemplate the circumstances of each group, their technology will naturally flow from this. Personally, this isn’t the sort of setting material that needs to be outright stated, though I do find people reference it a lot (my rebel tactics gets a lot of views), but it’s definitely the sort of work you should do, even if you choose not to “show” it in the end, so we’ll definitely stop to think about it.

Heat the Forge!

And that’s it! I think this lays out a roadmap of how to go about building our technology nicely, and I think we have most of the tools we need to do this. We are missing some pieces, but better to stop and build those pieces as we need them than to set up everything in a slow, boring manner in advance, because we’re often engaging in “premature optimization” which is one of the greatest creative sins one can commit!

So, where to next? Clearly I think Militaryconcerns interest us the most currently. We need to tackle the rest, absolutely, but we’ll start here, because it’s what people talk about the most, and it’ll serve as the basis for my playtest the best. What aspect of the military? Well, we need to hit everything, but I think the most obvious sequence is:

• Personal Gear
• Vehicles
• Spaceships
• Miscellaneous

We need to know what gear soldiers carry to know what vehicles support them to know how much space a spaceship needs to carry said soldiers and vehicles; things like factories, fortifications, starports, medical facilities, can come later, as they can be fairly easily abstracted away; I don’t think you’d even miss them if we forgot them.

Which faction? While I’m sure everyone would like to start with the Empire, I want to start with Maradon, because I have a pretty good sense of what they look like and they predate the Empire, so the Empire has adapteda lot of its technology to defeat the Maradon-led Alliance. After that, and this is subject to change, I’d like to do: Westerly (as they make up the bulk of rebellions), the Shinjurai (they straddle the line between Empire and Alliance) and then the Empire.

Before I do each, I’ll stop and talk about the doctrine that drives them and their preferred tactics.

Once I’ve finished the militaries of each, we’ll see if we can get a playtest up and running, and I’ll turn my attention to spycraft and civilian elements.

The Empire: Characters, and a Retrospective

(How am I doing, guys?)

I’ve written about the Empire for nearly 2 months and produced more than 70 pages of content (40k words).  Is it enough?  Is it too much?  Let me take a minute to think that through, discuss why I think my material is justified, and then to offer a summary of the whole thing, and a focus on building Imperial Characters.

My Target Audience

Back in the First Steps to a Setting, I described three sorts of people that I imagine might actually use Psi-Wars:

• Star Wars fans open to something new
• GURPS Sci-fi fans who want support for something Operatic
• DF Fans who want to play something sci-fi-ish, but don’t want to do the work.

My design has generally pushed towards a conservative design of the Empire: any fan of Star Wars will readily recognize the Empire of Star Wars in here, but with only a few major differences: Black Ops (and a similar organization surely exists somewhere in the EU), the fact that the Senate still exists, and the nature of the Emperor himself. Everything else is fairly recognizable.

From there, I’ve tried to focus exclusively on elements that directly support gameplay where I can.  The result should be organizations that need no additional work to play with (helping the DF-types), offering insights into how such organizations might work (for the GURPS Sci-fi fans), and offering Star Wars something familiar, but not too familiar.

I’ve chosen for the familiar path to cut down on the need to explain things to my players.  You don’t need to read all 30 pages of the Psi-Wars Empire to get that it’s like the Star Wars Empire: “Oh, it has dreadnoughts instead of Star Destroyers and Typhoons instead of Tie Fighters, and the Emperor is a little different.  Right.  Got it.”  This means it lacks some creativity, but I don’t personally feel this is the place for deep creativity.  Players should be grounded in a familiar world, and the Empire very much represents that world.  This helps the “Brents” who just want to jump straight into the game and not “do homework” to play.

Most of the material focuses on organizations, what they can do for you, and how they might oppose you.  This makes them a great grab-bag for the “Bjorns” who want to know which organization they should join, and why.  Perhaps he’ll join Black Ops, play as a Black Op commando and get some great commando toys.  Or perhaps she’ll play as a Imperial Security Agent who genuinely believes in the Empire, and is working to root out corruption from her post as an attache to a Minister of Justice aboard a Dominion-class Patrol Cruiser.  It also helps the Rebel player who wants to know what interesting opponents the Empire can throw against him.

This focus on organizations also helps the “Desiree” player who wants to know which factions to join and what they might want.  However, the elements that I expect will most interest her come at the beginning, as I discuss what it feels like to be in the Empire.

The player who will likely enjoy Imperial material the least is likely the “Willow.” This material largely lacks rich lore, other than perhaps the true agenda of the Emperor, but the most fascinating elements are likely the secret cabal of evil space knights that surround him, which I haven’t touched upon yet.  Why?  Because I need to understand space knights first, so we’ll come back to them.

I also want this to be a grab-and-play sort of document for GMs, hence the inclusion of agendas (which amount to session seeds), and minions, who represent characters the GM can immediately throw at his players.

The net result is on the very small side of an SJGames supplement (on par with Boardroom and Curia) and smaller than the average Pyramid (which is about 40 pages long), unless we count gear.

Summary and Character Concerns

Ultimately, a setting document should serve its players, and the Imperial document is no exception.  We need both a quick reference (ideally no more than one A4) to explain this part of the setting to the players, and some elements that players can immediately use if they want to come from the Empire.  For that, I offer the following:

The Empire: Summary

The Empire is the heir to the Old Galactic Federation. It overthrew the old aristocracy to save the galaxy from an invading alien menace and to bring equality to all. Granted total power by his revolution, the Emperor now sits on his throne, the master of the galactic core and the military-industrial complex that runs it.

The Empire is a Control Rating 6 society; It taxes heavily, allows its agents to ignore human rights, and employs propaganda and secret police to keep the population under control. In principle, its “citizens” have more rights than its “residents,” but these rights can and are revokes at Imperial will. The Empire also pretends to be a continuation of the old Federation, and thus still has democratic institutions, like the Senate, in place, but the Emperor has gutted them of any real power.
Organizations within the Empire include:

• The Imperial Ministries, which run the day-to-day bureaucracies of the Empire, and answer to the Chancellor
• The Senate, which acts as a voting body/debate club and rubber-stamps the Emperor’s edicts. It is headed by the “elected” Chancellor.
• Imperial Security, which answers to the Ministry of Justice and the Emperor’s Hand. It supplements local law enforcement with its own paramilitary security agents, and employs free-roaming “special agents” who investigate interstellar crimes.
• Imperial Intelligence, which also answers directly to the Emperor’s Hand, and handles espionage and sedition coming form outside the Empire. Often employs “prisoner legions.”
• The Imperial Navy, which answers to the Admiralty and the Grand Admiral, as well as the Ministry of Defense. They employ the mighty ships of the Empire and crush the Empire’s enemies.
• Imperial Black Ops, a secret arm of the Imperial Navy full of commandos, experimental ships, and dangerous weapons of mass destruction, and answers directly to the Grand Admiral

Playing an Imperial Charater

Cultural Lens: Imperial

Advantages: Galactic Common (Native) [0*]; Cultural Familiarity (Galatic Federation) [0*]; May take Imperial Citizenship [1] or Looks Good in Uniform [1] from your template’s pool of optional points.

Disadvantages: You may choose the following disadvantages in addition to the options given in your template: Code of Honor (Imperial) [-15], Fanaticism (the Emperor) [-15], Greed [-15], Intolerance (Alien enemy, alien minority or rebel scum) all [-5], Overconfidence [-5}, Sense of Duty (Empire) [-10].

*Only if this is your first language or cultural familiarity, otherwise normal costs apply.

Preferred Templates

Imperial characters tend to be Commandos (Imperial Black Ops or, less common, the Imperial Navy), Diplomats (the Imperial Ministry), Fighter Aces (Imperial Navy or sometimes Imperial Black Ops), Officers (Any, but especially the Imperial Navy or Imperial Security), Security Agents (Imperial Security), and Spies (Imperial Intelligence).

Imperial characters tend to come from Humble Origins; they’re just kids who grew up on a farm or in some colony who joined up with the Empire to see the world and defeat the alien menace. Treat Senatorial characters as Aristocrats; being a senator is a Titlethat comes with a Statusof +2. Most aliens in the Empire will be Outcasts, but sometimes they can rise above Imperial prejudice and make something of themselves within Imperial ranks. Finally, those wealthy or lucky enough to be trained at the Imperial Academy may take the background below.

Suicide Soldiers: Characters who wish to play a prison soldieror a confidential informant for the Empire may take Duty(Imperial Intelligence, Involuntary, Extremely Hazardous, 15 or less) [-25]. Such characters are generally Assassins, Bounty Hunters or Con Artists.

New Imperial Background: Academy Trained 20 points

The revolution that brought the Emperor to his throne cast aside the aristocracy in favor or meritocracy, and the Imperial Academy, on the capital world, represents the pinnacle of that ideal. There, the finest officers, administrators and senators learned their trade before taking up their posts. In practice, though, the Academy fosters a deep devotion to the Imperial ideal, and fosters connections between its elites; most high-ranking politicians appoint fellow alumni or close friends they met at the academy over more competent outsiders.

Prerequisite: Imperial Citizenship [1].

Skills: Administration (A) IQ [2].

Additional Skills: Another 18 points chosen from among Carousing (HT/E), Current Affairs (Politics) (IQ/E), History (IQ/H), Intelligence Analysis (IQ/H), Law (Any) (IQ/H), Leadership (IQ/A), Propaganda (IQ/A), Public Speaking (IQ/A), Research (IQ/A), Savoir-Faire (Military) (IQ/E), or improve any lens skill by one level for 2 points, or two levels for 6 points.

Additional Traits: You may also spend your remaining lens points, or some of your template advantage points on Ally (Commando, Security Agent, Spy, 250 points, 6 or less) [3], Contact (Military officer, Minor minister, security agent, etc, skill 15, 18 or 21, 9 or less somewhat reliable) [2, 3 or 4], Contact Group (Ministry, Skill 15, 18 or 21, 6 or less, somewhat reliable) [5, 8, 10], Favor (See Contacts or Patrons) [varies], Patron (Minister or Admiral) [10 to 20], Administrative, Military, or Security Rank [5/level], Top Brass [1], Wealth (Comfortable) [10].

Optional Disadvantages:Add the following disadvantage options to your template: Code of Honor (Imperial) [-15], Delusion (“The Empire and its forces cannot lose) [-5], Easy to Read [-10], Enemy (Minister, Security Agent or Admiral, Rival, 9 or less) [-5 to -10], Fanaticism (the Emperor) [-15], Intolerance (Alien enemy, alien minority or rebel scum) all [-5], Overconfidence [-5}, Sense of Duty (Empire) [-10].

Imperial Power-Ups

Most imperial characters take Experienced or Magnate as their power-ups. Cybernetic and Heroic are not uncommon. Imperial characters may also take the following power-ups:

Attache 6 points
The Empire brims with ambitious upstarts willing to lay down their life for the next rising star, and a player character certainly qualities! An attache represents a talented individual who has devoted his or her life to the PC and accompanies them wherever they go.

Prerequisite: Rank (Any Imperial) 3+.

Statistics: Ally (150 points, 15 or less) [6]

Basic Bodyguard 5 points
The Imperial character has managed to accrue a band of five personally loyal security agents or soldiers, who are BAD 2.

Prerequisite: Rank (Any Imperial) 3+.

Statistics: Ally Group (BAD 2, 15 or less) [5]

Elite Bodyguard 12 points
The Imperial character has managed to accrue a band of five personally loyal paramilitary agents or commandos

Prerequisite: Rank (Any Imperial) 3+.

Statistics:Ally Group (BAD 5, 15 or less) [12]

Black Ops Commando (Commandos only) 25 points
The commando serves Black Ops directly, and enjoys superior organizational power and access to Black Ops secrets. Characters who take this power-up must take a Secret (Black Ops)[-10] as part of their disadvantage package!

Advantages:Military Rank 3 (Lieutenant) [15], Security Clearance (Black Ops) [10]. Add Gizmos (Imperial prototype technology) 1-3 [5 to 15] to Advantage options.

Imperial Special Agent (Security Agent only) 25 points
The security agent represents one of the elite of Imperial Security, and is granted near total dispensation to do as he pleases throughout the empire..

Advantages:Increase Security Rank to 4 [20]; Improve Legal Enforcement Powers (Security Agent) [10] to Legal Enforcement Powers (Special Agent) [15] for 5 points.

Imperial Secret Agent (Spy only) 35 points
The spy represents one of the elites of Imperial Security, and has total access to all Imperial secrets.

Advantages:Intelligence Rank 4 [20]; Security Clearance (Imperial) [15].

Imperial Traits

Code of Honor (Imperial): Be polite and honest (but only to fellow Imperial Citizens!); Die willingly for the glory of the Empire; Never abandon a fellow Imperial. Never question the orders of your superiors; Take pride in your kit and always keep it well-polished;

Citizenship (Imperial): The Empire represents the single most populous state within Psi-Wars, but it differentiates its inhabitants between “residents” and “citizens.” Citizens, in principle, have unique legal rights, including the right to vote and the right to generous social welfare benefits. In practice, though, the Empire can and does suspend these rights whenever it wishes. Thus, Citizenship grants a +1 reaction modifier to imperial officials when it comes to legal processes: a security agent is slightly less likelyto beat you in the street if you’re a citizen, as it might cause an outcry, than he would be if you’re just a resident.

Imperial Security

You are under arrest, my lord. 

-Mace Windu, Revenge of the Sith 

I never broke the law! I AM THE LAW! 

-Judge Dredd

I must admit surprise that Star Wars almost never deals with the police (The films; the EU references the Imperial Security Bureau).  Sure, I realize that Star Wars is, of course, about war, but so much of what Star Wars deals with actually falls under something a police officer would deal with: A smuggler should fear the port authority (and not Storm Troopers), and a conspiracy of evil Sith should be uncovered by detectives, not by space knights.  In fact, we regularly see military personnel or the Jedi acting in a police role that the sudden and inexplicable abscence of the police becomes rather transparent, at least to me.  That, alone, is enough to justify the inclusion of Imperial Security (something the Old Republic does as well, by the way).  But I have more reasons.

Hannah Arendt, who wrote the classic analysis of totalitarianism,said that totalitarian societies had three characteristic institutions:massive propaganda efforts directed at their own populations, secretpolice forces, and concentration camps that caused mass deaths.   

-Bill Stoddard, Social Engineering

A police force imposes the will of the government on the people.  The Imperial Ministry may make the law but Imperial Security enforces those laws.  More than that, dictatorships need police, taken to extreme levels.  The Empire is almost certainly CR 6, and it must therefore police its people to make sure that no “sedition” or “corruption” has seeped in, and that nobody threatens to topped the delicate structure upon which the Emperor has settled his throne.  All must embrace the cause, all must understand the divine purpose of the Emperor, and all who do not must be found, convicted and shipped off to labor camps to die out of the public eye.

More than any single force, I expect the players will run up against Imperial Security.  When they try to assassinate officials, or smuggle medical supplies onto a rebellious world, or when they’re trying to make sure their machinations aren’t uncovered by the empire, it’s Imperial Security, not the Imperial Military that they’ll face.  Thus, we need them, both as someone to serve (especially if you’re a Bounty Hunter), but especially as opposition.

Imperial Security, or the Ministry of Justice, enforces the Emperor’s will.  They act as guard dogs, rooting out sedition, conspiracy and crime, and anything that would undermine the Emperor setting the Galaxy right again.

Arguably, the Empire enforces its laws on three levels.  First, it relies on local law enforcement to enact the will of the Emperor.  The Empire allows conquered (or “allied”) worlds to police themselves, using their existing law enforcement structures, provided they don’t step out of the imperial line.  

Imperial Security itself serves broader roles.  It acts as a supplementary force for existing law enforcement, bringing additional firepower if locals don’t have enough, and it investigates crimes in an interstellar jurisdiction.  That is, if a known criminal escapes off-world, he’s Imperial Security’s problem.  Imperial Security enforces the law with people who are “beyond” the reach of local law enforcement, such as making arrests of corrupt Viceroys or other ministers.  Finally, Imperial Security is tasked with the protection if the Imperial Ministry.

The Ministry of Justice governs Imperial Security, and it also passes sentence on criminals on the Emperor’s behalf.  “Trials,” such as they are, follow the Trial by Judge rules on page B508, and the Empire presumes guilt.  That is, if a Security Agent believes you are guilty, he probably has good reasons for doing so, and generally a trial consists of the Security Agent explaining what you did, perhaps offering some evidence to emphasize the severity of his claims, and the magistrate typically passes sentence.  If the magistrate finds the arrestee innocent, that’s an enormous repuditation of the Security Agent!

Agendas of Imperial Security

Like any ministry, the agents of Imperial Security often work tirelessly to promote their own self-interest, but they work less to hide corruption within their own organization because, as the ultimate imperial watchdog, they can turn a blind eye to their own wicked deeds. What sets the agendas of Imperial Security apart is that they often work to advance their interests by exploiting the crimes of others, and they dowork to uncover corruption, especiallyif it advances their careers. Most Imperial Security agendas however, simply advance investigations against known criminals. Examples include:
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• Imperial Security builds evidence against a smuggler. They have collected numerous interviews, confessions from family members and former associates, and now gather resources to mount a raid against his entire operation. This requires nothing less than a light cruisers and several corvettes, plus an entire platoon of assault troopers, of course.
• An Imperial Security Agent believes that a powerful minister has ties to the rebel alliance. However, the minister enjoys a powerful position, the favor of the Emperor and friends in the Ministry of Justice. To take him down will require both incontrovertible proof of his guilt, which the agent can use to justify the next step, which is concocting a scandal sufficient to make the minister untouchable, and thus cut him off from his political ties, making him vulnerable to an arrest.
• An Imperial Security Agent has integrated himself with the local crime gangs. He gains kickbacks in exchange for turning a blind eye, and some of those kickbacks, vitally, include information regarding criminal activity, or the coming and going on known rebels and traitors. As a result, higher ups in the Ministry of Justice have quietly worked with the Security Agent to hide evidence of the agent’s useful corruption, including hits taken out at the request of the crime boss, or concentrated efforts to hide evidence of wrong-doing on the part of the crime boss. However, Imperial Security does keep around just enough black-mail that should they wish, they can pressure the crime boss, or arrest him if he stops cooperating.

Imperial Security as opposition

 The Ministry of Justice, like any Ministry, lacks serious opposition and is seldom a major threat.  It’s usually BAD -0 to -2.  Imperial Security, on the other hand, offers substantially more challenge for players, and is typically between BAD -2 and BAD -5.

Imperial Security also supplies direct muscle.  In keeping with the heavy militarization of the Empire, most such “troopers” are heavily armed and well-trained, and likely to shoot first and ask later.  These consist of:

• Troopers, armed with pistol and neurolash baton
• Paramilitary response teams, including
• Lethally armed response teams
• Riot suppression squads
• Snipers

Imperial Security also fields vehicles including:

• Armored grav bikes
• Armored grav cars
• Surveillance drones
• Riot suppression tanks
• Aerial support vehicles
• Patrol Starships

The starships fielded by Imperial Security tend to be Corvettes meant for the transport of a single Imperial Agent and his team.

More on this tomorrow.

Serving Imperial Security

Imperial Security Ranks

10: Emperor

9: Emperor’s Hand

8: High Minister

7: Minister

6: Director, High Magistrate

5: Special Agent in Charge, Assistant Director, Magistrate

4: Special Agent

3: Lieutenant, Junior (Pro Tem) Agent

2: Sergeant

1: Corporal

0: Trooper

Low level Security Agents follow their paramilitary role and primarily represent muscle used by actual agents. Security Rank 0 through 2 represent paramilitary security soldiers and follow similar names and ranks.  Men with pistols and armor are “Troopers” and those who lead them, or more elite troopers, are corporals or sergeants.  Security Rank 3 represents a unique role: Lieutenant, which is a uniformed officer who might act as a local investigator and takes on a local administrative role, akin to a police chief.  He almost never takes the field, except to supervise less dangerous tasks, such as supervising customs.  These “paramilitary security agents” have Legal Enforcement Powers (Imperial Security) [10].  These agents may make arrests and perform limited search and have a local jurisdiction, but any violence they commit isn’t looked into in great depth or detail.

The “real” security agents begin at Security Rank 3 with the Junior (or Pro Tem) Agent.  These can only assist a genuine Security Agent (Security Rank 4) and only act within the bounds they give them, but otherwise have the same Legal Enforcement Power as above.

All Imperial Security Agents Security Rank 4 and above have Legal Enforcement Powers (Special Imperial Security) [15] and are free to do as they please with very loose guidelines.  Their jurisdiction covers the whole of the Empire (within the constraints placed upon them by their superiors), they may kill with impunity, engage in covert investigations and are under no obligation to support any “civil rights.”  They are the long arm of Imperial Security.  They may seize command of any local law enforcement or security assets and use them to further their investigations.

Higher levels represent administrative ranks.  Directors run entire planetary security departments or cover specific sorts of cases (interstellar murders, missing persons, seditious acts, etc), and are assisted in their largely administrative role by Assistant Directors.  Collections of these departments answer to a Minister of Justice, who all answer to the High Minister of Justice, who answers to the Emperor’s Hand, who answers to the Emperor himself.

Magistrates (Security Rank 5) and High Magistrates (Security Rank 6) represent a special role, that of judge.  They belong to the Ministry of Justice, rather than Imperial Security, and oversee the actions of Agents.  That is, they verify that the Agent has done the job he set out to do and arrested the right person.  In practice, this is typically a rubber-stamp (so much so that Agents who summarily judge and sentence their convicts when a magistrate is unavailable are almost never sanctioned by the Ministry).

Favors of Imperial Security

Entry Clearance (Pulling Rank p 13): Imperial Security bases aren’t public, and their prisons certainly aren’t.  Imperial Security can grant players access to a particular criminal or facility.

License (Pulling Rank p 13): Bounty Hunters who want to work with the Empire will first need to gain a license (Legal Enforcement Powers (Bounty Hunter) [5]) with Imperial Security.  The Ministry of Justice also issues licenses to carry weapons within the Empire.  Treat this as a License [1].

Warrants (Pulling Rank p 14): It should be noted that the Empire generally doesn’t believe in warrants and that its security agents are free to do as they wish.  Warrants might be necessary to go after high level officials, but only if a Security Agent wants to be sure he’ll face no blowback for his actions.  In this case, it represents the fact that the whole Ministry stands behind him in his actions.

Consultation and Specialists (Pulling Rank p 15): Imperial Security can offer Contacts with skills like Criminology, Electronics Operation (Surveillance), Forensics, Intelligence Analysis, Law (Imperial Law Enforcement), and Observation.  They’re usually between Skill 15 and 18.

Imperial Security also has access to confidential informants and criminals with interesting insights, and they’ll certainly make use of them!  Treat that as a “Specialist” request.

Files and Record Search (Pulling Rank p 15): The Empire has nearly every citizen and immigrant recorded in a database, as well as criminal records, evidence, locations of prisoners and incriminating surveillance on just about everyone.

Cash (Pulling Rank 16): Imperial Security can offer agents funds for minor expenses, using the noted values (that is, rank 4 agents can expect $25k, Rank 5 Special Agents can expect $75k and so on).

Gear (Pulling Rank 16): Imperial Security can offer access to any of the vehicles, equipment or weapons noted in tomorrow’s post.

Bailout (Pulling Rank 17): The Ministry of Justice, via the Emperor’s will, decides all sentences and thus may commute a sentence or even absolve a criminal of his guilt.  This certainly includes Security Agents who went too far, but it’s more interesting when it’s applied to other criminals that a Security Agent wants released.  Note that the Ministry of Justice does not have pull in foreign countries.  For that, you need the Ministry of Affairs.

Evacuation (Pulling Rank 17): Imperial Security has access to vehicles, starships and paramilitary attack squads.  If you’re in trouble, they can pull you out.  Rescue work and bodyguard duty is one of their primary purposes.

Facilities (Pulling Rank 18): Imperial Security offers top-level surveillance and forensics facilities (both offering +5 to such rolls), but they can also offer to hold prisoners in extremely high security prison cells, at least BAD -5.

Muscle (Pulling Rank 19): Imperial Security offers 5-10 basic troopers, armed with neurolash batons and blaster pistols.

The Cavalry (Pulling Rank 19): Imperial Security offers 5-10 paramilitary agents, such as riot troopers or armed response troopers.

Character Considerations

Requirements: Characters serving Imperial Security must have a minimum of Wealth (Average) [0], Security Rank 0 [0], and Duty (12 or less or 15 or less, Extremely Hazardous) [-15 to -20]. and must take Legal Enforcement Powers (Imperial Security) [10]. Imperial Security Agents must have Legal Enforcement Powers (Special Imperial Security) [15] and Security Rank 4 [20] or higher.

Taking the whole of Imperial Security as one’s enemy is too much.  A single Special Agent as an Enemy is worth -10 points by default (equivalent to a PC’s power level, generally).  This is true as an Ally as well, which is more common than Patron.  For Patrons, see the Imperial Ministry.

The Imperial Ministry and Senate

Turmoil has engulfed the Galactic Republic. The taxation of trade routes to outlying star systems is in dispute.Hoping to resolve the matter with a blockade of deadly battleships, the greedy Trade Federation has stopped all shipping to the small planet of Naboo.While the congress of the Republic endlessly debates this alarming chain of events, the Supreme Chancellor has secretly dispatched two Jedi Knights, the guardians of peace and justice in the galaxy, to settle the conflict….  

-The Phantom Menace

“Control the coinage and the courts—let the rabble have the rest.” Thus the Padishah Emperor advised you. 

-Dune

Dreary politics and statecraft is probably the furthest thing from the minds of the players of any action scenario, and yet politics feeds into every action scenario: The Expendables features a political coup against a South American dictator at its core, and James Bond stories revolve around Cold War politics.  The action hero might not be a politician, but politics often drives the context of his action.

Thus, I’d like to  get the “least exciting” of our Imperial triumvirate out of the way first, and take a look at imperial politics.  Of all the character types, I expect only the Diplomat will really invest deeply into the organ of state within the Empire, but any character with an aristocratic background might find himself or herself tied into it.

But everyone and anyone might find themselves at the beck and call of a powerful imperial official or a wealthy imperial senator.  They’ll call upon Assassins to destroy their rivals, or find themselves the marks of the Con Artist, or they’ll confer quietly with their personal Spies.  The point of this organization, more than anything, is to provide context for the actions of our characters.

The Imperial Ministry

The Imperial Ministry represents a large collection of smaller organizations that run the day-to-day affairs of the Empire.  Given the somewhat incestuous nature of appointments and competing agendas, treat it as a single, large organization with the understanding that it has competing sub-organizations all vying for funding and the political clout of their masters.

Some example ministries within the Empire:

• Ministry of Finance: Tasked with collecting taxes, governing business and expressing Imperial will to galactic corporations.
• Ministry of Heritage: Tasked with creating and censoring art, this ministry is the core of imperial propaganda efforts, as well as the indoctrination of the youth.  They’re also tasked with antiquities and museums, and thus psionic conspirators seeking to uncover ancient relics often co-opt the ministry.
• Ministry of Science: This branch of the government competes with the Ministry of Culture and Legacy over universities and handles funding for major research projects, usually for military purposes.  This ministry is a hot-bed of Neo-Rationlists.
• Ministry of Affairs: The most powerful of the ministries (outside of Justice), this governs diplomatic efforts both inside and outside of the Empire.  In practice, internal “diplomacy” means the indirect governance of worlds, and those highest in its ranks can become legally untouchable and virtual dictators.
• Ministry of Justice: This governs Imperial Security and is handled separately.
• Ministry of Defense: This governs the Imperial Navy, in principle, and is handled sparately.

Agendas of the Imperial Ministry

The Imperial Ministry typically engages in the same agendas as any Imperial group, mainly that of covering up its own corruption and attempting to ruthlessly expand their own personal power.  The Ministries certainly bicker with one another, arguing over who has what jurisdiction in a particular, specific case.  But individual ministries might have unique agendas based on their actual roles within the empire.

• Ministry of Finance and Commerce: 
• A minister has long been skimming from tax funds from a backwater world that has turned out to be more lucrative than expected, which he launders through bogus contracts to a company; An auditor has decided that something strange is going on, and now the Minister needs evidence his crimes and connections hidden, or the auditor conveniently assassinated.
• A corporation, with ties to an outspoken senator has grown powerful and, with their rise, so too does the senator’s power increase.  The Emperor wants the senator’s power-base eliminated without visibly eliminating the senator himself. This requires concocting evidence of criminal activity on the part of the company (or even finding legitimate wrong-doing) or, barring that, create new policies that hurt the company’s profits.
• Ministry of Heritage: 
• Due to imperial infighting and incompetence, the rebellion won a great victory!  The Emperor moves swiftly to shore up his defenses, but meanwhile the increase in military spending paired with the high profile win for the rebel alliance has pushed many people on neighboring worlds to reconsider their position against the rebellion.  Thus, the ministry must censor all reports of the rebellious victory and step up efforts to paint the rebellion in a negative light.  Confessions of a known rebel to terroristic warcrimes would certainly help!
• Archaeologists of the Ministry of Heritage have uncovered the location of a temple sacred to the local population, and this temple might contain psionic secrets the Emperor desperately wants.  However, a full Imperial dig on the site will certainly incite local revolt amongst the populace.  The minister plans to censor any reports of the dig, paired with propaganda about the unity of the Empire and the local faith, to provide cover stories for the sudden Imperial presence on the supposedly hidden temple (for example, co-opting a local priest and showing footage of him inviting them into the temple).
• Ministry of Science: 
• A plague wiped out an entire imperial garrison to a man!  The Ministry of Science sends in its researchers, backed by Imperial Chem Troopers, to investigate the plague the caused the sudden death, and to see if they can find some way to weaponize it.
• A planet known for its top-notch university and data-libraries has finally fallen under imperial sway.  The Ministry of Science intends to remove old administrators and education programs and replace them with their own, and neo-rationalists within the Ministry want to be sure that their particular philosophy is spread among the students.
• Ministry of Affairs: 
• An alien king, despite reservations, has finally allowed an Imperial embassy onto his world.  Now, the real work begins: first the ministry must build ties with locals sympathetic to the Empire and ensure that they’re dazzled and glorified by invitations to the Imperial Capital, while those who support the King are consistently undermined.  Then, once informal alliances have been made, maneuver one into a position of inheritance under the king, and then have someone assassinate him: Bonus points if you can pin the assassination on the Rebellion as a response to the King’s diplomatic gestures to the Empire.
• An old ally of the Empire demands both senatorial representation and citizenship for his people, both of which are opposed by nearby worlds which are senatorially represented and citizens, for fear that their unique status will be watered down.  Neither really matter much to the Empire, but this is a perfect opportunity for a minister to advance his career by carefully “negotiating” a compromise among the various parties.

Imperial Ministry as Opposition

The Imperial Ministry has no minions of its own: it relies on the Imperial Security (the Ministry of Justice) to handle its security. If one can penetrate its velvet ropes, they’ll find that he ministry is rarely difficult to deal with, usually no worse than BAD -0 or -2.  They’re not the true source of power in the Galaxy, but rather, they are used (or protected) by worse or more powerful organizations and conspiracies

Serving the Imperial Ministry

The Imperial Ministry is a Galactic Organization with 10 Administrative Ranks and a Patron cost of 30 points.  An individual ministry is smaller and has a Patron cost of 20 points.

The Imperial Ministry has Comfortable wealth: If you serve the Ministry, you’ll be well-compensated with a cushy job and not much responsibility.

Ranks of the Imperial Ministry

The Ranks of the Imperial Ministry are as follows:

10: The Emperor

9: The Chancellor

8: High Minister

7: Minister

6: Director, Viceroy or Ambassador

5: Deputy Director or Special Envoy

4: Auditor or Envoy

3: Secretary

2: Supervisor

1: Attache or Assistant

0: Civil Servant

The titles for Administrative Ranks 0-3 are informal, though the ranks themselves definitely matter.  The actual names might well change from Ministry to Ministry.  Administrative Rank 0 represents the average schlub working a desk-job for the Empire.  These are your wretched bean-counters who put in their 8 hours before dragging themselves back home.  Administrative Rank 1 and 2 represent supervisors or managers of higher level positions in the management of a particular office, while Administrative Rank 3 represents someone who governs an entire office, and usually have explicit titles like “Secretary of the Office of Indigenous Taxation for Grist.”

The title of Attache at Administrative Rank 1 represents someone with unique powers and is often attached to higher level ministers as personal assistants, or to diplomatic missions.  They do not generally govern people directly, but gain special legal privileges or security clearances.  This represents things like the bodyguard or intelligence liaison of a more powerful official.  Characters with the title might have higher levels of rank, but no higher than 3 (if you need to break them down, do so into Deputy Attache, Attache and Special Attache at 1, 2 and 3 respectively).

Administrative Rank 4 of Auditor represents a special position: Auditors investigate their own ministries, looking for signs of corruption or deviation from the Imperial will.  Auditors have ranks as well, answering to Special Auditors at rank 5, and Chief Auditors at rank 6.  They have Legal Enforcement Powers (Auditor) [10] which means they may make arrests within the purview of their own, specific ministry, but are not required to obey your civil rights while investigating you (that is, they can peer into your private life, raid your private communications, etc; the ministers of the empire must be beyond reproach!). They are the boogeymen of the Ministry.

Administrative Rank 4 also contains the lowest rank of imperial diplomats.  Envoys, Special Envoys, Ambassadors and Viceroys all receive Legal Immunity (Diplomatic) [20].  This grants them complete immunity to all laws and access to a “diplomatic pouch” as well as the ability to extend some of this legal protection to some of their subordinates (typically attaches and assistants), in that if they do something on the diplomat’s behalf (or the diplomat can claim that they were), they might be able to get them out of trouble.  The difference between the ranks of Ambassador and Viceroy is that the former is sent to external powers and the latter to internal powers.  That is, if the Empire wants to open up negotiations with, say, the Cybernetic Union, they send an Ambassador because the Empire has no sovereignty there.  But if they want to “send an ambassador” to a conquered world that lives under the fiction of their own sovereignty, the empire will send a Viceroy, who rules through the local ruler.

Administrative Rank 5 and 6 represent regional ministry command.  Directors and Deputy Directors have complete command over a planetary-scale branch of the ministry, such as total taxation of a world (or even a limited region of space) or some specific element of the ministry (such as an entire course of research).

Administrative Rank 7 and 8, the ranks of Minister and High Minister, represent complete control over a ministry itself.  The Ministers make up a council that advise the High Minister, and the directors of several subsidiary ministries will report to a single Minister.

Beyond those ranks, we reach the Imperial Court; The Chancellor handles the domestic affairs of the Empire, and all Ministries other than the Ministries of Defense and Justice answer to him. And he, ultimately, answers to the Emperor.

Favors of the Imperial Ministry

Authorization and License (Pulling Rank page 13): The Imperial Ministry, as a legal body, can authorize anything within their purview:

• The Ministry of Finance can grant license to form a corporation or to collect taxes on their behalf, or authorize a trade deal.
• The Ministry of Heritage can authorize archaeological digs or the distribution of a “news” story.
• The Ministry of Science can license a particular scientific institution or allow research into “forbidden” topics.
• The Ministry of Affairs can grant an individual full Imperial citizenship, or allow a foreigner access to the Empire (a visa).

Entry Clearance (Pulling Rank 13): Most ministry buildings are, technically, open to the public, though in practice many of them have security layers that prevent the public from gaining access to the deepest recesses.  For the most part, actual employees are allowed free access.  The Ministry of Science and Research, though, usually has top-secret research facilities, and the Ministry of Culture and Legacy has libraries of forbidden knowledge.  Both could require Pulling Rank to access.

Consultation and Specialists (Pulling Rank page 15 and 19): The Imperial Ministry has access to skilled bureaucrats and attaches who can assist you.  A typical Contact within the Ministry has skills such as Administration, Current Affairs (Politics), Diplomacy, Savoir-Faire (High Society), Law, Politics and Propaganda. Specific ministries have access to specific skills:

• Ministry of Finance: Accounting, Finance
• Ministry of Heritage: Archaeology, History, Literature
• Ministry of Science: Engineering (Any), Expert Skill (Psionics), Research
• Ministry of Affairs: Current Affairs (High Society or Regional), Law (International)

Files (Pulling Rank page 15): Each ministry has pages and pages of diplomatic dossiers, accounting books, or top-secret research documents or archaeological finds, that one can access via the proper channels.

Cash and Funding (Pulling Rank page 16): Ministries regularly grant money to their officials for some specific cause (and double the values shown: a Rank 4 diplomat can access $50k on a successful pulling rank roll), but they’re more likely to fund a major expedition, such as an archeological dig or a prototype warship.  For those purposes, treat the funds as effectively unlimited.

Facilities (Pulling Rank 18): The Imperial Ministry can grant access to top-of-the-line Archaeology, Engineering. Propaganda and Research tools, as well as the ideal places to throw a party.  These facilities all grant +5 to any roll for these purposes.

Transportation and Travel (Pulling Rank 19): The Imperial Ministry will help  you get to anywhere you need to go, inside the Empire and, to some extent, outside of it too.  Transporation is generally limited to the Ministry of Affairs (private shuttles will move literally anything you want and bypass any customs agent), but all the Ministries have things like they like to transport, from valuables to antiquities to secret prototypes.

Propaganda: Given sufficient time (say, a week ahead of time, but it’s ultimately up to the GM), the Ministry of Heritage or Affairs can spread a particular idea.  Treat this as Compliments of the Boss: A successful request applies +3, a critical success applies +6, a failure applies -1 and a critical failure applies -2.  This applies to appropriate influence rolls and to Communion reactions for path-based miracles for the appropriate path.  This effect is temporary: usually no more than one adventure (usually lasting no longer than a week: for more permanent effects, buy some manner of Reputation), and only to a single world.  The player needs to define the nature of the propaganda up front and it only applies as appropriate (for example, if you spread the idea that you are the reincarnation of a world’s savior, you cannot use it to impress off-worlders or the non-religious, or when you behave “out of character”).

Character Considerations

Requirements: Duty (Imperial Ministry, 9 or less or 12 or less) [-5 or -10], Wealth (Comfortable) [10].

Administrative Rank: 0-10 (Galactic)

For those serving ministries, Auditors (Administrative Rank 4-6) can gain Legal Enforcement (Auditor) [10] which allows them to investigate a single ministry with complete impunity, able to do anything necessary within the jurisdiction of that ministry, to uncover corruption.

Those serving as envoys, ambassadors or viceroys (Administrative Rank 4-6) may purchase Legal Immunity (Diplomatic) [20], granting them total legal immunity to any group where they represent the Empire, including a diplomatic pouch, with the full weight of the Empire’s disapproval to anyone who overrides this immunity.

Most characters won’t directly serve a ministry, but might have a minister who looks out for them.  Having a Favor with the ministry is 1 point/rank for a single successful use of Pulling Rank with a ministry.  A single minister as a Patron is worth 10 points as a base.  Most Contacts in the ministry are skill 12-15.  A Minister as an Enemy is worth -20 points, and is typically only a Rival and thus worth half point, and is usually only on a 6 or less, and this is at default -5.

The Imperial Senate

In principle, the Imperial Senate is not an organization so much as it is a body of elected representatives of the Imperial worlds who introduce, debate and approve or veto laws and imperial policy.  Each world (that has been granted senatorial rights by the Ministry of Affairs) may elect a single senator who will represent their world to the whole of the Empire.  In practice, the Senate has no real power, and can be legally overridden by the Empire.  Nonetheless, the appearance of blatant dictatorship still does not set well with a galaxy still convulsing with revolution, and thus the Senate has some weight in granting legitimacy to the Emperor, though senators who stand against the Emperor with too much forcefulness will find the political engines of the Empire turned against them, and they’ll be arrested for sedition in short order, or simply vanish mysteriously and tragically in the night (and the Emperor will mourn  your passing quite public ally, of course).

Agendas of the Senate

Individual Senators want to ensure that they continue to be elected and that their rivals are not.  The actual mechanics of elections are too tedious for Psi-Wars; instead, they’ll hire the characters to sabotage, assassinate or scandalize their opponent, while digging up any information that their rivals might use against them.

Broadly, the Senate all toes the Imperial line (to do otherwise is to invite death or arrest), but they break down into a few parties:

• Militarists, who vocally support the Empire’s expansion, regularly call for the defeat of the Rebellion and generally celebrate any Imperial conquest.  They tend to be those most pro the Emperor himself, but they can be critical of him when the Empire’s warmachine slows down, and often express dissatisfaction with the direction the suppression of the rebellion has taken.
• Industrialists who support increases subsidies for corporations and increased cooperation between corporations and the Empire.  They tend to be in the pocket of various corporations and lobby on their behalf before the Senate (and thus, by extension, the Emperor).
• Populists worry about the plight of the people.  They tend to come from worlds recently granted senatorial status and whose people are the worst off.  They remind the Emperor of his promises of populism, and are the most ardent opponents of the old aristocracy.  They’re the most likely to criticize the Empire and to express support for the rebellion, on account of the fact that the Emperor and his Ministries often don’t follow through on their promises for the people.  Those who remain loyal to the Emperor make excuses for his lapsed promises and laud any movement made towards the people as an example of the Emperor’s grand magnanimity, making him sound more generous than he is. 

The Senate as Opposition

The Senate lacks minions or even major security systems beyond what the Senators themselves bring.  Going up against the Senate is strictly BAD -0.

Serving on the Senate

Being a Senator requires election by a planetary population that has been granted senatorial status by the Ministry of Affairs.  “Senator” is a Title [1] with a Status of +4.  This can be granted and revoked by the changing political climates of the planet, but in practice, the politics of planets and their interactions with imperial bureaucracy means that once a senator, you’re often a senator for a very long time, unless some terrible scandal means the Emperor must retract his protection and your people throw you out.

Senatorial Ranks

The Senate doesn’t have ranks, though they do differentiate between “Junior” and “Senior” senators, but this is a purely informal distinction that makes no difference to one’s status.  However, they do integrate in the Ministry, in the form of oversight committees that theoretically have the ability to demand information from a particular ministry as well propose regulations, hire or fire ministers. In practice, as all of this must go through Imperial channels, this is (again) a role without real power.  Thus, Senators may gain Courtesy Administrative Rank worth 1 point per level.  For those who have high ranks in their party, they have Courtesy Political Rank, also worth 1 point/level.

Rank 6: Committee member

Rank 7: Committee Chair, Party Whip, Party Secretary

Rank 8: Party Speaker

Rank 9: Speaker

A Committee Member has the right to sit on a board overseeing a specific ministry.  They are managed by a Committee Chair. Parties have their own ranks as well.  Being a member of a committee allows one to Pull Rank with the overseen ministry via Common Courtesy: It counts as full rank for minor, cosmetic things (gaining access to buildings or insecure files), but as rank 0 for more substantial requests (but the senator can make them).

The minority parties have Party Secretaries (who govern day-to-day affairs of the party) and Party Whips (who ensure that everyone falls in line and votes properly) at Courtesy Rank 7, while the head of the entire party is Courtesy Rank 8.  The majority party has the same roles, but one rank higher (8 for Majority Party Secretary and Whip), and they have the Senate Speaker, the highest rank within the Senate, who determines the agenda of the Senate himself and answers directly the Emperor.

Senatorial Favors

The Senate has no power, and thus can grant no favors.  In practice, it acts as a social club, so ranks within the Senate can replace Status when it comes to “Status as Pulling Rank” in regards to the Senate alone.  Thus, if one wants to be invited to the Senatorial ball, then naturally the Speaker will be invited, but when it comes to, say, getting funding for planetary renovations, a Senator is as stuck as anyone else.

That said, most clever Senators learn to curry Favor with the Ministry, and can usually pull more strings than people realize.  The Senate can lend considerable legitimacy to a cause, after all, and so wise Senators learn to turn their symbolic weight into real (if delicate) power.

Senatorial Character Considerations

Minimum Wealth: Comfortable.

Courtesy Political Rank: 0-9 (Galactic)

Being elected Senator is a Title [1] worth Status +4 [20].

A Favor from a Senator is worth 1 point/status level of the Senator for a single successful use of Status as Pulling Rank. A single senator as a Patron is worth 10 points as a base.  A Senator as an Enemy is worth -20 points, and is typically only a Rival and thus worth half point, and is usually only on a 6 or less, and this is at default -5.

Designing Organizations: Overview and Empire

New Empire by Adam Burn

Organizations represent the heart of every Action game.  Organizations (the police, the CIA, a spooky cabal) hire heroes to fight other organizations (the Mob, terrorists, a spooky cabal).  While organizations aren’t central in the sense that they’re not the mechanics that drive the action, they encompass, surround and provide the context for the action.

So, more important for Psi-Wars than planets, or alien races, or cool technology are organizations. Of course, some organizations will be unique to planets or regions of space, but a few major organizations so thoroughly saturate the setting that they must be defined before the rest of the setting can be: the Empire, the Rebellion and the Space Knight Order.

All of them need the same sort of questions asked and answered to work in a proper Action context, so in this introduction, I’m going to start with the Empire itself as an example of Organization design.

The Components of an Organization

When we commit to setting work, like an organization, it behooves us to remember that this work serves a purpose: It needs to be useful to us.  What, from the perspective of an Action scenario, do we need from an organization?

• People to fight
• Challenges to overcome
• Benefits for loyal heroes.
• Competing agendas to exploit
• Secret agendas to uncover
• Personalities within the organization to give it a face
• Vision and a sense of purpose to unit the organization into a cohesive whole

That is, in an Action scenario, we need people trying to put bullets in us while we put bullets in them, reasons its difficult to just walk into a place and take what you need, a driving force behind the organization that we need to stop, or possibly multiple so our more social characters can play one side off of the other, and secret information we can uncover in our incursions.  Of course, not every organization will be antagonistic, so sometimes we want to know what an organization can do for us.  And we don’t want to deal with an organization in its abstract, but face-to-face: James Bond might work for MI6, but the face of MI6 are people like M, Q and Moneypenny.  Finally, the organization should serve some purpose.  People join it, support it and expand it for a reason.  What is that reason?

Also,  I intend for Psi-Wars to be useful to more gamers than just myself.  Thus, a broader, more flexible concept of the Empire is more useful, as it lets more people make use of it.  In principle, the Empire is “villainous,” but some GMs might prefer to see it as heroic, or morally grey.  Alternately, we can show a variety of faces depending on how the scenario and the GM wishes to interact with his preferred organization: perhaps even though the leadership is rotten, the rank-and-file can be heroic, or vice versa.

The Vision of the Empire

Every organization should serve a purpose, even a vast, sweeping government like the Empire.  Its ruler needs a reason to get up out of bed in the morning, and its soldiers need a reason to grab their weapons and go and suppress a populace.  Ultimately, at their very core, even a government exerts its power through ideas, even if that idea is only “If I don’t obey, they’ll kill me.”

We already know some of the history of the empire so we know some of its ideals: It had its roots in an increasingly insecure galaxy, in opposition to an increasingly self-absorbed elite that refused to deal with problems and then martyred those who did, and finally in a sense that the elites stopped caring about the common man.

Those Who Sacrifice Liberty For Security Deserve Neither. 

-Benjamin Franklin

Security: The Empire arose from the fear and panic caused by a terrible, galactic incursion.  Its founders promised to do what the previous Republic could not: Protect its citizens and the status quo.  In a sense, the Galactic Republic knew it was fading and dying, and the Empire is an attempt to rejuvenate the dream of a united Galaxy.  This, probably more than any other aspect of the Empire, explains its popularity, and to support this goal, it needs to present a strong military presence and at least make a show of defending its people from clear and present threats.

On the idealistic side, this means the empire and its legions heroically charge headlong into danger and rescue its citizens.  More cynically, this acts as an excuse for huge military spending (which empowers the military elites and the industrial complex that profits from eternal war), and requires the Empire to manufacture enemies where none exist.  If the rebellion didn’t exist, the Empire would need to invent it.  It also explains why the empire needs to constantly expand: it needs to capture territory to pacify dangerous locals and create a buffer between itself and the barbarian outsiders, only eventually that new territory becomes part of the Empire and itself needs to be protected, which means more territory needs to be conquered to pacify the locals and act as a buffer, etc.

Power to the people: The prime source of discontent in the old Republic was the growing economic disparity between the aristocratic elites and the common man.  The rise of robots made it possible for capital-owners to dispense with labor entirely, leaving an entire swath of galactic demography without a way to participate in their civilization. The Emperor promised to change that by redistributing the means of wealth among the people once more.  This means the Empire must, first of all, seize excessive wealth and, second of all, be seen to redistribute it. This almost certainly means increased welfare benefits (the Roman Empire had the “grain dole”) and likely the forced restructuring of planetary economies.

Idealistically, the Empire dismantles corrupt and top-heavy institutions and redistributes their wrongful gains to the everyman: the local farmer sees increased land and free robotic labor, while local workers find more and more work available for them (certainly in the form of more jobs building Imperial war machines), and those with crushing debts see their debts wiped away by government-mandated debt-relief.  Cynically, all of this generosity has to come from somewhere, so redistribution always creates winners and losers, and if the losers are aliens, rebels and outsiders, nobody cares.  Thus, this drives the forces of conquest.  And, of course, the one who decides where all of this wealth goes is the Emperor himself, and the ability to redistribute becomes a fantastic source of power.  Rather than use it to benefit “the people,” why not benefit his allies?

Incidentally, this raises the question of “power to what people?”  The Star Wars fandom contains persistent but unconfirmed allegations of racism towards the empire, given the fact that all Imperials we see are (white, British) humans, while the Republic conspicuously contained powerful aliens.  What about our Empire?  Well, Germany definitely had a racist element to it, but in some ways that racism was a unifying factor: it suggested that “the German people” were a “race,” which implied that the previously disunited people were, in fact, one.  Rome had a similar approach, uniting Rome and the Italian Allies under the special, privileged banner of “Roman Citizens.”  Germany was never really an Empire, though, not in any lasting sense.  Realistically, an Empire must consist of a variety of races and cultures, all ruled by a central point of power.  I’d argue that the Empire definitely privileges a group, the central core of the former Republic, who receive special privileges over “non-citizens.”  This, by the way, suggests the existence of Social Stigma(Second Class Citizens).   Our prime citizens are definitely human, but I’ll wait to decide if it’s exclusively human (though there’s a conceptual advantage into making it so, as its simple: No need to remember the 3 Imperial Races or something like that).

Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men 

-Lord Acton

Absolute Power: The Emperor makes the case that his reforms require absolute power (perhaps because of a history of suppression by the Senate).  He needs to be able to override the old laws and old traditions (the “constitution” if you will) to make necessary institutional changes.  He also needs secrecy, to prevent the enemies of the Empire (who are numerous!) from knowing what he’s doing.  After all, spies and conspiracies lurk around every corner.  The Emperor, thus, must be seen to be powerful, with grand parades, and seen to be competent and trustworthy.  Proof to the contrary is necessarily seditious and must be quashed.

Idealistically, these two things work together to create a situation where a benevolent dictator that you can trust works behind the scenes to fix all the problems you face, and everyone needs to work with him to protect his vision of a greater Empire.  Cynically, yeah, can you really trust someone with absolute power and absolute secrecy?  Redistribution and rampant militarism become a source of absolute power: if you resist, the Empire will seize your wealth and park a fleet at your door.  If you tell people about their crimes, the Empire will declare your words to be seditious, censor them, and throw you in prison.  We have a recipe for absolute power, and thus absolute corruption.  This also means the most common “secret agenda” would be one of personal advancement.

Who serves the Empire?

The cumulative effect of the vision of the Empire is that it generally attracts two groups of people.  The first generally benefited from the largess of the empire: They saw their worlds saved, traitors rooted out from among their midst, saw the rich toppled and their property redistributed among their people, and saw the chaos at the end of the Republic era defeated by the unity and order of the Empire.  They see the ideals of the Empire as worth fighting for, worth dying for, and are willing to support the new order. The second also enjoys the largess of the Empire, but they have subverted the ideals of the Empire: they seize property for themselves, they invent enemies to justify their actions, they hide their misdeeds behind the veil of state secrets, and they grow enormously in power.  Because of their concentration of power, they tend to reach higher ranks more quickly than the idealists, and they use the idealist’s own idealism against himself to exploit and control him.

How does the Empire achieve its goals?

The Empire is too large to be comprised of a single organization.  Instead, we can think of the Emperor as a capstone on three different organizations.

The Imperial Military

The Empire needs to secure its borders, protect its people from external threats and, of course, crush rebellion.  For that, it needs a military force that can move swiftly to respond to threats and deal with incursions, as well as be suitably impressive to remind everyone of the power and grandeur of the Empire (he is, after all, making the Galaxy great again).  The Empire has at its disposal a galaxy worth of industrial mass production and generally the love (and/or fear) of the people.

This represents the military side of our Imperial Conflict, something for our Fighter Aces, Officers and Commandos.

The Senate and the Imperial Ministry

The Empire needs to run.  That is, taxes must be collected, laws passed, honors passed out, and so on.  A functioning bureaucracy is vital to the running of an empire, but isn’t something particularly exciting to play out.  It matters in the context of scandal and potential sources of files and data, but it will rarely result in characters who exuberantly join in and depend upon it for favors.

When Augustus Caesar became princeps, he didn’t dissolve the Senate as Palpatine does in Star Wars, but instead allowed it to continue, carefully rehabilitiating the egos, but not the power, of the senators.  In principle, Hilter also allowed the German Parliament to continue… only the only legal party was the Nazi party, and he had the sole right to pass law.  Still, I choose for a Senate here, at least for now, representing the high society of the Empire, and carefully packed with Imperial supporters and gently stripped of any real power.  It amounts to a large debating society that can vote on its own laws, or laws given to them by the Emperor, but only the laws passed by the Emperor come into effect, and he can bypass the Senate to pass his laws.  Thus, at best, it becomes a propaganda move, where the senate can only express disapproval by voting against the Emperor.

Together, we’ll call it the government of the Empire, and it contains Administrative rank.  It also includes diplomats, who arguably negotiate with allies and enemies, but in practice typically dictate surrender terms to beleaguered worlds, and then act as governors, allowing the local rulers to issue edicts on the Imperial behalf.  Imperial Propaganda also issues from the government.

Imperial Security

If the Empire passes laws, it needs those laws enforced.  We need people who will chase down smugglers, hire bounty hunters and arrest con artists.  We also need people to root out the internal “enemies of the people,” who uncover spies, traitors and dissidents in their midst.  The Roman example fails us, and Star Wars doesn’t get much into this, but we can borrow from the German model, where party enforcers (the SS) became embedded into the very heart of the legal enforcement arm of the government, as concerned with party loyalty as with ensuring all laws were followed.  And, of course, given their absolute power, elite security agents became judge, jury and executioner.  The government would turn a blind eye to their personal empire building, provided they toed the party line.

A Mystical Conspiracy

The Empire of Star Wars is actually a secret conspiracy of evil space knights and wizards trying to take over the Galaxy.  By including such a conspiracy in our galaxy, we give our Space Knights and Mystics something to do, so it seems to suit both Psi-Wars-as-Star-Wars-Knockoff, and Psi-Wars-qua-Psi-Wars. What conspiracy is an interesting one, though.  Obviously, our orthodox space knights, our Jedi, oppose the Empire, because they’re good and the Empire is evil.  They also worked to overthrow the last Empire, the Alexian dynasty.  This suggests that the upholders of the Alexian dynasty, the Oracular Order, would support the Empire, but the Alexian Oracles supported elites over the people.  They don’t support the Empire either.  That leaves a Sith analog, which fits best anyway: a group of dissident space knights who have come to serve the Id instead of the Super-Ego, and work to turn the Emperor into the Mystic Tyrant and then to re-establish their power across the galaxy.  If the Empire are the Nazis, this order is the Ahnenerbe.

If the the Jedi are the Christians of the Roman Empire, and the Sith the Cult of the Emperor, then it might be nice to have a third philosophy.  We have our old Oracular Order, but the Empire of Star Wars seems very scientific without making much progress.  I propose a philosophy of neo-rationalism.  This philosophy is common both in the Cybernetic Union and among the educated elite of the Empire, and for inspiration, I’m borrowing a bit on the idea of Neo-Platonism, at least in the sense that the original, questing nature of Platonism had, in the hands of some Neo-Platonists, turned into mysticism and founder-worship.  Neo-Rationalism pretends to be about science and progress but, in fact, is more interested in quoting the sages of Rationlism to sound clever, and then engaging in very unsafe Mad Science.

I’ll come back to philosophies and Space Knights when we tackle philosophies in more detail.

Imperial Challenges

So, you’re up against the Empire.  What does that entail?  Well, for opponents, that depends on who you’re facing (typically Imperial Security or the Imperial Military).  But we can present some unified security ideas.

The Empire is typically BAD 2 to 5, though going up against the Emperor himself is going to be BAD 8, at least.

Physical Security

The Empire prefers to rely on a combination of superior industrial capacity, superior manpower, and omni-present surveillance to keep its installations secure.

First, the Empire typically constructs very large and imposing buildings around its points of defense.  Even a military campaigning on a planet will typically include engineers who will build up some kind of fortification for when the military sleeps, resulting in impromptu bases an fortifications the military can retreat to if necessary.  For handling materials, doors and gates tend to be Security and attached hardware tend to be tough (see p21 of Action 2).

The Empire has more than enough soliders and police forces to engage in patrols.  These typically consist of between 4 and 10 men, who report in at regular intervals, usually once every 15 minutes or at checkpoints along their route.  Killing a patrol will result in an investigation within 15 minutes.

The Empire also believes in constant surveillance.  They prefer to construct their installations with long hallways allowing a single IR camera to watch long stretches of corridor.  The Empire prefers to have every corridor monitored thus, but this might not always be practical. Naturally, humans watch these cameras, which means the destruction of a camera alerts watching guards that something has gone wrong, and that not all cameras are watched with perfect attention and, of course, that you can kill the people in a camera room to evade detection, though again, you’ve got at most 15 minutes until someone needs to check in again.

The empire prefers electronic locks.  It might use a number pad, but the most common lock requires a key-swipe.  These keys might be issued to individuals, but they’re often associated with their security chips (see below).

Information Security

Computers in the Empire are typically huge, centralized mainframes with access terminals all throughout the installation.  Local terminals have access to standard services (a map of the area) or local security concerns (the local work roster, access to local cameras or lock overrides).  To hack them for anything more central than that (total system access, highly classified files, etc) is either impossible, or requires double BAD penalties.  The central mainframe contains access to all information on all local terminals plus all vital and important information, which makes them the prime target for attack and are thus usually hidden at the heart of an installation, surrounded by thick walls and locked doors, and they always have a self-destruct function that will ruin the computer and its data if the Empire decides they’ve been compromised.

Data can be transmitted to interstellar locations by the Imperial Data-Net.  This involves relay stations, usually small stations (often completely automated or with only a few people) in orbit around a star.  The destruction of a relay station can remove a system off from the Imperial Data-Net, but they usually have a few redundant stations and they keep their locations secret.

All imperial transmissions are encoded and those codes come in multiple levels (Code White, Code Red and Code Black).  Officers cleared for a given code level receive the necessary codes on a security chip that they carry with them, which looks like a thick, clear plastic card with colored stripes denoting its level of clearance. This security chip can be inserted into a console to gain access to higher security levels and is often used to unlock doors.  The security chip also contains the officer’s data, so the Empire records which person accesses which data.  These codes are updated daily: the officer inserts his card into an encoder in the morning and receives his new codes.

The concept of the security chip has been expanded across the empire: all citizens need to have an identity chip, a similar card that they must carry with them that Imperial Security can check at any time to verify that they are who they say they are, as well as any other pertinent information the empire wants to keep on them (criminal record, etc).  The chip, of course, does not carry that information directly, but rather, the imperial data-net has all the necessary information in their databases and the card contains an identifying sequence that points to the right entry.  That means that you need to hack into an imperial database to change your credentials.  Good luck!  Sometimes, imperial officials will issue temporary identity chips that contain allof the necessary information on them.  This is usually the case with things like tourist visas or temporary permits for new Security Agents or recent recruits, or any time there needs to be a stop-gap measure between the issuance of an identity chip (or a change to an identity chip) and an update to the central Imperial data core.  Typically, once the change has been made, no new card is issued: the card contains identifying information that is only accessed if it’s more recent than any database information found based on the card.  These cards are checked at computers at stations, or run against hand-held devices and then signaled back to hearquarters.  The total time to run an identity chip is a minute or two at most.

Social Engineering Security

The Empire relies on its Identity Chips to prove identity.  If someone has a chip that verifies who he says he is, most officials will simply believe you.  The Empire’s greater concern is treachery and disloyalty.

Imperial Security regularly deploys security agents who will audit officials suspected of criminal or seditious activity.  Primary concerns are supporting the rebellion by any means or undermining imperial rule in some way (such as taking bribes).  If found guilty, the official is very publicly punished, making an example of him.  The Security Agency is definitely allowed to commit torture to extract a confession, and thus the very presence of Security Agents are enough to encourage cooperation.  Those who do cooperate are given much lighter sentences and allowed to maintain their dignity to some degree and let off the hook, depending on what they did (taking bribes and then explaining what you did and turning the bribes over to the Empire results in forgiveness.  If you gave away major imperial secrets, you’re probably screwed).  The net result is that if you want to turn an Imperial official, you have to make him more afraid of you than he is of Imperial Security, or you have to offer him something that makes him think he can escape justice.

Typical punishments include public execution or service in a labor camp (the Empire doesn’t condone slavery, but it will force you to work to death extracting resources for the state if you break its laws).  Lesser crimes typically just result in fines or imprisonment.  The laws of the Empire are sufficiently convoluted that Imperial Security can usually find some law that a family member has violated, and thus the threat of arresting someone’s daughter, son or wife is also a typical punishment: Those who betray the Empire, even if they escape, inevitably find that Imperial justice will fall upon their friends, family and allies.

Psionic Security

Psionics haven’t been such a cause of concern that the Empire has felt the need to move against them.  The days of Space Knights are long behind the Galaxy.  Typically, this is left to our secretive conspiracy of evil space knights to root out when funny things begin to crop up.  That said, neo-rationlist scientists and the Empire’s academic body have been busily rediscovering psi-tech, and will certainly begin to put it into practice soon.

Imperial Agendas

The primary concerns of the Empire are securing its power, personal advancement and hiding/rooting out corruption.

In general, the Empire will move to secure itself, and in so doing, open up an opportunity for corruption, and then hide that corruption via a cover-up.  Characters investigating the Empire might first start trying to prove the innocence of a party, and thus discover a cover-up, which means they uncover corruption in a plan that was meant to help the people of the empire, but has been subverted.  They might uncover a hidden agenda against the rebellion, or a secret weapon program, hidden at the heart of the conspiracy.

Securing the Empire

The empire seeks to defeat the Rebellion and bring all of the Galaxy under its dominion.  Most “secret Imperial plans” will, thus, be of this flavor.  Some examples:

• Secret attack plans on an independent world
• Details on a spying operation into the Rebellion
• Details on a new secret super-weapon that will end the Rebellion once and for all.
• Diplomatic negotiations with an independent world containing secret subversion plans to make sure the world will definitely fall into Imperial hands

Personal Advancement

The powerful of the Empire will seek to become more powerful, often at the expense of the Empire, of independent worlds, or of political rivals.  These plans are invariably individual plans rather than overall plans of the Empire, but they’re still relevant to an Action-inspired scenario.  Some examples:

• Plans to assassinate a rival
• Details of a secret agreement between a corporation and a powerful political figure
• Details of a secret agreement between an enemy faction and a powerful political figure
• Proof of bribe-taking, corruption or embezzling of Imperial funds
• Proof of subversion of public programs for the enrichment of a specific elite

Corruption and Enforcement

Corruption represents a two-edged sword for the Empire.  On the one hand, it threatens to undermine what the Empire presents itself as.  It needs its officials to toe the public line about securing justice and peace for its people.  On the other hand, corruption is what the Empire is all about.  It entices powerful generals and politicians into service by promising them fantastic rewards that violate the promises the Empire made to its own people.  Thus, it needs to expose that which threatens the Empire, hide hypocrisy, and create scapegoats when that deception is uncovered.

Personal advancement covers most of the actual corruption the Empire might seek to expose.  This covers how the Empire goes about uncovering that corruption and what it does when it finds it.

• Information on a pending investigation on a potentially corrupt politician
• Information on a current, or completed, investigation on a corrupt (or innocent!) politician
• Information as to the current whereabouts of an incarcerated or enslaved family member.
• Details of an organized cover-up of a politicians corruption or a general’s war crimes
• Proof of a doctored report that shifts blame from a guilty politician to an innocent party

Psi-Wars History 3: The Roots of Communion

History doesn’t repeat itself but it often rhymes 

-Mark Twain 

Four thousand years before the rise of the Galactic Empire, the Republic verges on collapse. DARTH MALAK, last surviving apprentice of the DARK LORD REVAN, has unleashed an invincible Sith armada upon an unsuspecting galaxy. 

-Knights of the Old Republic, Opening Crawl

The First Jedi Temple, from the Force Awakens

The Star Wars universe boasts a considerable history, often a cyclical one.  In it, Luke goes in search of the “First Jedi Temple,” and we’re treated to visions of the ancient city of Jedah, and we have an entire game series set in the “Old Republic” which nearly replicates the galaxy in its later state, only with a few minor changes (convenient for an RPG!).

This isn’t that far from how history actually works.  History tells the story of humanity, our struggle to pull out of primitive and poverty-stricken barbarism, then to rise to the dizzying heights of civilization only to experience a total system collapse and be driven back into the depths of barbarism.  The history of China studies of the rise and fall of dynasties, and our own history has the rise of Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire (you might call the 14th century collapse of High Medieval society brought on by the Black Death such a fall, but Europe recovered with its identity largely intact), and Rome itself rose after a period known as the Greek Dark Ages, which followed the Late Bronze Age collapse.  It is this last that some scholars argue give rise to Greek myths of a “Golden Age” that preceded the darker classica era.

Whether there’s truth to that, those myths do exist, and they shape our myths.  The notion of ages, of civilizations rising and falling, followed by heroes plumbing the depths of those ruins to find lost treasure and secret lore.  Star Wars, following the trope of fantasy and mythic stories, whispers of lost Jedi temples and ancient Sith empires.  It’s not the only to do this: Warhammer 40k has a loose sketch of its considerable history (and has recently released Warhammer 30k!); Dune likewise hints at considerable history, such as references to the Butlerian jihad; Foundation features an Empire that was ancient and on its way our before the series even begins, and also has an archaeologist hunting for the origins of humanity in the Galaxy; Traveler sets its current game in the third Imperium, and has details to the previous two.

Thus, a truly ancient history certainly has a place in Psi-Wars, but as before, we need to justify it by determining what questions it answers.  The most obvious to me are “So, what kind of cool ruins does this game have?” or “What’s the story behind all of these aliens,” though I would caution against making every alien race older than humanity.  But the biggest one players will probably want to know is:

• “What are the origins of Communion?”

I don’t mean this in the sense of “How did the psychic phenomenon of Communion come into existence?”  Presumably, it has always existed, though if we wanted some race to have constructed it, that should have happened literally millions of years ago.  No, I refer to the faith of True Communion, the philosophy that drives so much of the game.  Just as the Jedi faith seems to have ancient roots, and our own myths and religions also seem to have roots buried in oral traditions that existed before the dawn of time, players may well expect that Communion is an ancient faith that greatly precedes the modern era.  If that is true, then we need to tell the story of the world that gave rise to it

And while we’re doing it, we can answer another question:

• “What are the coolest relics possible?”

If we have a truly ancient galaxy, then we can have truly ancient relics brimming with unspeakable power, the sorts of things wars might be fought over.  These, too, would be grounded in our dawn era.

Finding Inspiration

The Roots of Christianity and Judaism

Christian heresy is related to diversity of thought within Judaism. This is more historically accurate than the first quotation suggesting truth, and unity, before error, or heresy. Christianity grew from the very diverse soil of Second Temple Judaism and never had the original unity claimed by orthodox historians or theologians. 

-Robert M. Royalty, Jr., Heresies in Early Christianity

 We probably know more about the origins of Judaism, as well as who wrote the Old Testament and why, than we do about the true origins of Christianity and who wrote the works of the New Testament and why.  Jesus Christ and his followers didn’t leave any written works that came down to us; the works that claim to come from those disciples were almost certainly written a generation or two after Christ was crucified.  Thus, our image of the message and philosophy of Christ comes from those who followed him, and particularly from the Apostle Paul, so much so that some academics argue that Pauline Christianity is Christianity, as he had surprisingly little contact with the original apostles who would have actually known Christ.

Christianity started as a splinter off of Second Temple Judaism, one of many.  The Sadducees and Pharisees represented a more traditional take on Judaism (with the Pharisee outlook eventually serving as the foundation for modern Rabbinical Judaism after the Romans destroyed the Second Temple).  The Essenes represented an antagonistic splinter group that argued against the legitimacy of current Temple leadership.  The oppression the Romans inflicted on the Jews (despite the Bible’s emphasis of Pilates’ patience, the real Pontius Pilate was so brutal and insensitive to Jewish custom he was rebuked by the Emperor himself) resulted in rampant apocalypticism and strong resistance to Roman occupation, including the rise of the Sicarii, Jewish dagger men who used cloak and dagger to assassinate their enemies, centuries before the Hashashin.  Into this world of chaos and prophets, Jesus walked and preached what seems to have been a very revolutionary theology.  Despite claims that the Jews killed Christ, the Romans most certainly did, and they used crucifixion, a punishment the reserve for their most seditious criminals, meant to send a message to deter others from committing the same crimes.  The Romans clearly saw Jesus as a threat.

That didn’t stop the Christians from carrying the message of their messiah, however.  They stepped into a world brimming with philosophies, cults and ideologies.  The New Testament is full of a perplexing antagonism between Jew and Christian, but it largely stems from the fact that they were competing ideologies at that time; Judaism also spread across the Roman Empire, attracting new adherents with his fascinating and ancient ideas.  Rome was barely born when Jews were first putting pen to paper and putting the Old Testament into its final form, and many inhabitants of antiquity found this ancient pedigree fascinating.  Christianity offered a similar theology but one more open to non-Jews and one that had much easier conversion requirements.  Once the Romans flattened the Temple, the last ties between Christianity and Judaism had been severed, and the two faiths went their separate way.

But Christianity had numerous other competitors in the old world.  The Mysteries of Mithras, a Persian mystery cult held the attention of many of the military men of Rome.  Greek, Roman and especially Egyptian paganism, especially the Cult of Isis, held strong sway over Mediterranean populations before the advent of Christianty.  The philosophies, or even “philosophy-religions” of the Greeks had long held Roman fascination, especially Stoicism and Neoplatonism.  The compelling ideas of Neoplatonism so gripped the ancient world that the Jews of Alexandria began to weave those ideas into Judaism; Philo of Alexandria tried to show that the Bible held Greek philosophical ideas and, that since they predated Socrates by centuries, that Socrates must have been influenced by Judaism!  His ideas managed to creep into early Christianity, which fused with all sorts of interesting faiths and philosophies swimming around the ancient Middle East at that time creating numerous “heresies” that so bedeviled the early Church; among them the much-discussed Gnosticism.  These heresies resulted in outright violence, usually over points that might seem utterly pedantic to modern ears, such as the exact nature of Christ’s divinity, but it was enough to come to blows over. Eventually, Constantine pushed the Empire towards Christianity and tried to enforce an agreement with the Nicean creed.

If we dig deeper into the roots of Christianity, we must understand the Judaism from which it sprang.  Most archaeology finds no evidence for an Exodus outside of Egypt.  Instead, they find that the tribes of Israel and Judah grew up naturally as a distinct subset of Canaanite culture during the early Iron Age.

Judaism as it came to be in the time of Christ was forged by two major events: the scattering of the tribes of Israel, and the Babylonian Exile.  The conquest of Israel by the Assyrians triggered the first An exceptionally brutal people, the Assyrians scattered many of the Israelites and their refugees flooded into Judah, where their prophetic tradition of YHWH merged with the Judaic tradition. For example, the repetition of stories, such as the two tales of the creation of the world found in Genesis, likely stem from this synthesis of two related traditions into a single work.

Thereafter, once Babylon defeated Assyria, it eventually took over Israel and Judah.  Babylon had a tradition of “stealing gods.” In those days, it seems, people identified their gods with physical manifestations, such as statues, and Babylon would often hold those “gods” hostage.  So it was with the Ark of the Covenant, and the elites of Israel.  While in captivity, the Jews began to form this idea of Jewish identity, because they lived in Babylon, but were not Babylonian, and clung to the remnants of their old identity, which meant clinging to their old documents, whether it was literal holy texts, or oral traditions.  Once Persia defeated Babylon, Cyrus the Great had a policy of religious tolerance, and he allowed the Jews to return back to Israel and to rebuild their temple (though this would take quite some time).  The result was that these returning Jews brought back with them a distinct sense of Jewishness, and it was likely around this time that the Old Testament really took its form.  It was likely redacted from five different documents, and it was probably ultimately redacted by “the father of Judaism,” the prophet Ezra.

What strikes me about the history of these two deeply connected faiths is their mutual origins in adversity.  Judaism forged its identity not by being the best or more powerful, but by synthesizing ideas from other cultures as well as hardening and intensifying its own uniqueness under the pressure of oppression.  Christianity did likewise, pulling from its Jewish roots and refusing the yield under intense Roman pressure, but also adapting to a new world, a new outlook, and forging a faith that would take over the world… though, perhaps, not with the message its original founder had intended.

It’s also noteworthy that each faith had numerous interpretations and subdivisions that later groups would try to overcome with documents that blended those various traditions together, and where that failed, ostracizing the “wrong” traditions as heresies (which, incidentally, comes from the Greek word “choice,” and refers to the school of thought to which one chooses to adhere).  If we wanted to be accurate to the history of religion, there would not be one Jedi order, but many, and if there were not many, it would be because the Jedi order suppressed those heretical schools of thought (like the Sith…)

The History of Indian Religion and Philosophy

It is one’s self 
Which one should see and hear
And on which one should reflect and concentrate
For by seeing and hearing one’s self
And by reflecting and concentrating on one’s self 
One gains the knowledge of this whole world
-The Great Forest Upanishad

Early Western philosophy, and especially Western theology, has most often concerned itself (if I might oversimplify) with the question of God and on finding a singular origin of things.  Indian philosophy, by contrast, is far more concerned with the question of “What is the self?” and how it relates to the universe at large.  Moreover, whereas Western philosophy and theology see themselves as distinct traditions, Indian philosophy and religion blend together seamlessly (so much so that one can find epistemological discussions in religious texts).  What we often think of as “oriental wisdom,” the sort of thing that suffuses the philosophy of Star Wars, with its koans and meditation, mostly stem from Buddhist and Brahmanical traditions which, themselves, have their roots in India.  And I personally find the discussion of “self” and “the universe” to be exceptionally well-suited to handling how one might view Communion, as Communion is all about how one views oneself, and how one connects oneself to a larger, greater universe of psychic phenomenon.  In my research through the world of philosophy and religion, I’ve found loads of great ideas from a variety of traditions, but none more suitable than Indian philosophy.

The root of Indian philosophy goes back much farther than Judaism (unless we count oral traditions that almost certainly came from the Bronze Age).  Migrating Indo-European people (who likely shared ancestors with Persians) brought with them a religion that likely merged with the remnants of the Indus Valley civilization, during the end of the Bronze Age and the dawn of the Iron Age.  This resulted in what was almost certainly an oral tradition that was later written down in the form of the Vedic texts.  These contain within them the details of rituals (including animal sacrifice) and the divisions of caste (“varna”) that exist within India today, including the Brahim and Kshatriya castes, or “priest” and “warrior/king.”  In principle, being educated and connected with God made the Brahmin the most important caste, but I find that history seems to suggest the Kshatriyas were the real “elites” and the Brahmins often catered to them, with lots of texts detailing philosophical and theological discussion between the two.  Thus, the Vedic religion was a religion that catered to the elite and pushed for society to stay in a specific status quo.

Destiny is a gift. Some go their entire lives, living existence as a quiet desperation. Never learning the truth that what feels as though a burden pushing down upon our shoulders, is actually, a sense of purpose that lifts us to greater heights. 

-Blinky, Trollhunters

Eventually, the Brahmins expanded the ritual core of the Vedic texts with a sort of philosophical commentary called the Upanishads, which drilled down to what the felt was the theological core of the Vedas.  These discussed several key concepts of the Vedic religions.  First, they discussed the atman (the self) and the brahman, the totality of that which is real (‘the “universe”).  The “self” in this context is not the body, nor is it the mind, but the central, core bit of someone that makes them them, the inextinguishable part of them that will always remain the same no matter how they change.  This idea of a permanent self gave rise to the idea of reincarnation and karma (which might be most easily thought of as “sin,” but it’s really more of the accumulation of attachments one forms with the world), which tie one to the cycle of reincarnation and prevent one from grasping the absolute truth necessary to transcend that, as well as dharma, ones purpose, thus something like destiny, but not in the sense that it’s what you will become or what you will do, but what you should become and what you should do.  Finally, all these become bound together with the idea if ahimsa, or non-violence.  Violence carries with it a dark karma and, of course, if one can reincarnate, ones beloved ancestors might be the very person (or animal!) you’re harming!  Also, as an aside, Western philosophy in antiquity seemed very utilitarian, often justifying morality by suggesting that good guys finish first rather than last, while Indian philosophy, from what I can see, has a stronger moral fiber, arguing that if one does not wish to die, it’s reasonable to suppose that someone else does not wish to die, and that if you feel it would be wrong to kill you, you should extend that same courtesy to someone else.  This makes sense from the interconnectedness of things suggested by the Upanishads.

India had a variety of other religions, at least one of which was Jainism, of which I’m afraid I know very little.  Some sources I’ve read suggest that it might even predate the Vedic faith, but it seems to me to be closely interrelated to it.  Jainism might be best understood as an extreme ascetism.  Devoted Jainists took things like ahisma and karma very seriously, and would struggle to do nothing, forming attachments to nothing so that they could escape the cycle of rebirth, and would studiously avoid harming anything.  They would refuse to even boil water or prepare food, because that always caused some form of harm, and they relied on the generosity of others to keep themselves alive (and, eventually, wouldn’t even accept that, letting themselves wither away and die once they felt they had fully escaped).  The Jainists were very critical of the Brahmins and their accumulation of wealth, their rituals of animal sacrifice and their catering to power.

Buddhism seems to have evolved in part as a response to both Jainism and Brahminism, which is why it calls itself “the middle way.”  It rejects the extreme asceticism of Jainism, but accepts its criticisms of Brahminism (and, thus, accepts many of the arguments and beliefs of the Vedic texts, but argues that the Brahminism doesn’t take things far enough).  One noteworthy departure from Brahminism is the Buddhist reject of atman. Buddhism argues that there is no self, no ultimate, deep central core, and that the very notion that you have some unchanging element is an illusion, one of the many illusions that keep you attached to the cycle of reincarnation.  It also seems that the earliest texts detailing meditation are Buddhist.

I personally find it difficult to parse where one of these religions end and another begins, or which faith came up with which idea first (the general consensus seems to be that they all sort of spring from the Vedic texts, but this position is not without controversy!), because they certainly intermingled almost from the beginning, arguing back and forth and borrowing from one another.  Rather than thinking of them as three separate faiths, it might be easier to think of them as three interwoven but distinct traditions.  This is most clearly highlighted in the age of the Sutra, aphorisms meant to compel the student to stop and think and thus acquire a deeper theological or spiritual truth, which usually had works accompanying them that explained what these aphorisms really meant.  The Hindu sutras and the schools they spawned were clearly influenced by Buddhist and Jainist thought, as well as one another.

What jumps out at me from the Indian religion and philosophy is how much philosophical thought went hand in hand with their faith, similar to how Jewish philosophy often worked in parallel with its faith (though, to be fair and despite protestations to the contrary, much the same could be said of Christianity and Islam).  Here, rather than deal with oppression, you have a variety of schools that need to deal with criticism, and thus they borrow from one another until they have very thoroughly streamlined and sophisticated answers to deep questions (which likely explains their lasting cultural impact on the world)

The End of the World

I wish I could find a quote about the Romans first encounter with the Middle East that I enjoyed very much.  It pointed out that the Middle East was full of self-consciously ancient people, people who had traditions so old they utterly dwarfed the traditions of the Romans, or even the Greeks, whom the Romans saw as an ancient people.  The pyramids, when Caesar first gazed upon them, were already impossibly ancient.

The world of the bronze age was fascinatingly interconnected and wealthy.  By all accounts, Mycenaean Greece was far wealthier than classical Greece. And despite waging war on one another often, the aristocracy and royalty of the ancient Middle East often referred to each other in familial terms, and regularly intermarried (if you think of them as Renaissance Europe, with loads of intermarried aristocracy that all knew one another better than than the knew the populace they ruled, that might not be far off). 

So, why did this cosmopolitan and wealthy era end? One theory argues that as systems (like civilizations) get more complex, they just inevitably collapse under the weight of their own complexity and our inability to handle it.  When your central government (and the Bronze Age relied on very top-heavy, centralized governments) becomes unable to understand what’s going on on its borders, it loses those borders.  This theory makes the case for having “ages” in our galaxy, as in each era, we’ll see rising complexity, then an inability to handle said complexity, and a collapse.

But I find this theory a little vague.  If we want a direct cause, sudden climate changes or natural disaster often presage the death of a civilization.  The collapse of the Bronze Age coincided with a “little ice age”, a global cooling that lasted nearly 20 years.  This was likely caused by the eruption of Hekla, an Icelandic volcano. Particularly impressive volcanic eruptions have shaped human history before, such as Thera and the decline of the Minoan civilization or the Toba Super Volcano and the near exinction of all of humanity.

If we want a more human cause, we have the Sea Peoples.  All across the ancient Middle East, we have evidence of massive destruction of cities, caused mostly by fire over a 50-year span, as well as numerous references to invaders.  The evidence we have seems to suggest a mass migration of people, similar to the massive migration that caused the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, and the sudden pulse of migration caused by the Mongolian conquests.  In fact, we regularly see these pulses throughout history, where some movements on the Eurasian steppe results in waves of people being kicked off their land, who seize nearby lands, which kicks those people off their land and so on until there’s a sudden crashing immigration that threatens to topple an empire.  Most often, the Empire can  handle this, but if you pair it with bad weather and excessive complexity (“degeneration”) and you can topple a mighty empire.

Whatever the cause, the collapse of the bronze age seems to have left its mark on the mythologies of the people that followed, just like the Roman Empire left an indelible imprint on the migrating people who would later become Europeans.  I imagine growing up in a world filled with the ruins of buildings too complex and grand for your civilization to build would demand stories to be told, real ones if you know them, embellished ones if you can, and made-up ones if you have no story.  The Iliad, for example, which served as a foundation for later Greek culture, was almost certainly based on a real war that happened in the dying days of the Bronze Age.

Sometimes, civilizations vanish completely when they fall.  Sumeria certainly did.  But usually, when a civilization falls, it leaves some legacy of its passing: Sumeria gifted its heirs with cuneiform, for example.  But just as often, a fallen civilization will carry on in some way.  Rome didn’t just vanish, it evolved into Italy and its legacy carried on in Europe.  Egypt likewise didn’t give up its traditions just because it fell to the Persians (and then the Greeks, and then the Romans, and then to the Arabs, and then to the Ottomans). Instead, it carried on its ways, bringing them forward all the way to Rome, and thereafter it changed and evolved: Egypt became a major center for early Christianity, and these Christians, the Coptics, remain in Egypt to this very day.  Great cities like Cairo came after the Arab conquest of Egypt.  History carries on.  Just because a civilization’s heyday is behind it, I don’t want to forget that it continues to evolve, to impact the world, and to be impacted by it.

Designing Ancient History

Design notes

The core elements that stand out to me is the need to have an intelligent and clever race, a worthy proxy for the intellectual traditions of India and Judea, that sees itself oppressed again and again, and is forced to focus intently on its own identity during times of great adversity.  This will serve as the basis for True Communion, and it needs to connect up with the space knights of the human civilization.

What we need them, are our ancient imperial oppressors.  Ideally, I’d like to have quite a few interrelated ancient empires that knew one another and warred with one another regularly.  One element that stood out to me about ancient (iron age) history was the savagery of the Assyrians, resulting in an alliance to take them down, followed by the ascendancy of the Babylonians.  I’d like to see something like this, where a terrible empire is knocked over by a not-great Empire, which serves as the great power for quite some time until the confluence of three factors, degeneration, natural disaster and invasion, pitch it over and it never really recovers.

Rather than have three, I’d like to have 5 civilizations

• A great evil empire (our Assyria)
• A decadent empire that defeats the evil (Our Egypt and Babylon)
• Some non-threatening trade-empire (similar to the Pheonicians or Carthage,or diving back farther, the Minoans and the Mycenaean)
• A barbaric menace (our Sea Peoples, our Scythians)
• The originators of True Communion (our Jews)

For the great evil empire, I’ve been toying with the first machines, what the Cybernetic Union mistakenly believes are a good idea to resurrect.  Of course, someone has to build them, and I feel particularly inspired by the Vodyani from Endless Space 2 or the Ezrohir from Torchlight 2, both races of energy beings that have fused with armor to remain alive.  They might have mastered some of the principles of Broken Communion, using its repetitive ghostliness to infuse their machines with a dark energy.  Remember that idea I had ages ago about the hyper-intelligent planet-killer?  This would be the race that would built it, our “Unicron.”  We’ll call this race the Vampires for now, until we get to them in greater detail (though “Titan” would work well, as they’re the fathers of monsters).

Ever since I started Psi-Wars, I’ve been thinking about our decadent empire.  This race will fuse “orientalism,” the sort of fanciful notions the West had about Turkey and the Ottomans with the ancient grandeur of Egypt. This is the race of dancing girls and slave warriors and powerful, effeminate tyrants, and the race of huge monuments and ancient cults.  They need to be humanoid, so their dancing girls are appealing to us, but they’ll have a dark and sinister edge to them.  If the Vampires represent Broken Communion, these represent the temptations and power of Dark Communion.  I’m very inspired by the Twi’leks and the Sith of Star Wars here, and we’ll call them “Dark Space Elves” for now.

The originators of True Communion are certainly the most important aspect of this cycle.  I see them as a mastermind race, someone with a deep and powerful psychic connection (likely inherent Telepathy).  They should also be believably defeated by both the Vampires and the Dark Space Elves, giving us the necessary oppression, and exposure to them helped build on their ideas of Communion, and giving us the oppression necessary to forge that diamond of identity.  I’d also like them to have a touch of a sinister air about them: they seem more foul but feel more fair, if you will.  That is, they’re a believable proxy for the conspiracy theories that swirl around Jews, but just like with the Jews, those conspiracy theories are completely false.  The race is pacifistic and just wants to be left alone or, if they do conspire, they seek to bring about unity and peace to the Galaxy.  They conspires against wicked men, and thus wicked men hurl slander at them.  I had originally intended to make them similar to Yoda, but perhaps something more like Starcraft’s Protoss might be closer to the mark, or the Endless of Endless Space.  We’ll call them the Sages for now.

The last two aren’t so important.  Our trade-race might be inspired by Carthage or Phoenicia, as mentioned, or the Lumeris of Endless Space 2, or really any trade race.  They’re mobile and only opportunistically militant, and might have served as early rivals with humanity for the galactic center as the two picked up the pieces of the fallen galactic empires.  We’ll call them the “Traders” for now (edit: as of the writing of this post, they hadn’t been fully defined, but since then, my Patrons have put quite some work into them!).  Our warrior race should be substantial enough to threaten our decadent empire: they should breed quickly, be highly mobile (the space-equivalent to horse-tribes) and powerful at war.  Rather than brutish barbarians, though, it might be nice to make them heroic and honorable after a fashion, as they liberated our Sages after all, and I rather picture ancient “golden age” civilizations as somewhat fantastical, and we already have our monster races.  The Scythians also have strong ties to the myth of Amazons, so it might be interesting if this race featured female warriors.  However, whatever their sophistication, their empire didn’t last.  Mostly, they accomplished the dissolution of the Dark Space Elf empire, leaving the way open for the rise of Pax Humanity.  I’m not really sure where exactly I should draw inspiration for them, but they should have a fierce and ferocious appearance, perhaps shark-like.  We’ll call them “Amazons.”

As for a natural disaster, how about a supernova?  The sudden collapse of a massive star at the center of a galactic region into a black hole could certainly play havoc with hyperspace.  If this happens near the center of the Dark Space Elf empire, suddenly their capital might be unable to reach the rest of their worlds as their routes have all changed.  Their power becomes scattered, and this might result in collapsing trade networks, which (especially in an interdependent galaxy) causes economic ruin, which results in an every-man-for-himself mentality, leading to an uprising of these Amazons who lay waste to the parts of the empire that resist them, and disregard (even protect) the parts of the empire that pay them tribute.

The Ancient History of the Galaxy

In the earliest dawn time of the galaxy, we first see our Sages beginning to trade with the Traders while the two growing empires of the Vampires and the Dark Space Elves begin to circle around the center of the Galaxy.  The Vampires strike first, conquering some (but not all!) of the Sage worlds, leaving one in ruin and driving away the Merchants.  They also savage some of the Dark Space Elf worlds, until the Dark Space Elves retaliate, retake their worlds, conquer all of the Sage worlds, and drive the Vampires completely out of the Galaxy (they might remain somewhere, hidden away in the Galactic Fringe for the Cybernetic Union to hunt for later).  The rise of “City States” to the complete victory of Dark Space Elves Empire probably takes 1000 years (first, the Vampires rise and consolidate into an empire, while the Dark Space Elves do the same, but slightly later).  The war itself likely rages across the galaxy for hundreds of years, giving us 100-300 years of war before the Vampires are largely (but not completely, of course) exterminated.

The Dark Space Elf empire probably lasts a very long time, say 1500 years of multiple smaller dynasties, while it slowly slides into degeneration.  It likely makes sense for intermediary events in here, a couple of different dynasties, evolving relationships with the Merchants and the Sages, rebellions (at least one Sage rebellion, to be sure), but most of this isn’t that important for our core history, but might be something to think about if we’re looking for more inspiration.  By the end of this time, though, the fighting spirit of the Dark Space Elves have collapsed into beautiful, sophisticated Decadence.

Then something terrible happens: the collapse of a major star into a black hole.  This might be a natural disaster or it might have been engineered by some faction (perhaps a remnant of the Vampires, or perhaps a rival faction within the Dark Space Elves).  This scrambles hyperspace all throughout the galaxy, but especially in the core of the Dark Space Elf empire and this results in a collapse of trade networks and the ability of the Dark Space Elves to project power.  What follows is 50 years of chaos, where the Sages throw off the yoke of the Dark Space Elves and the Amazons rise and break the power of the Dark Space Elves once and for all, and then collapse themselves, which takes another 50 years or so.  What follows is 400 years of collapse and dark age of competing factions for power.

During these dark ages, we see the Traders gaining a foothold in the galactic center, and some new power rise up in the area of the galaxy that the Dark Space Elves used to occupy.  This is a slave-taking race, oppressive and wicked, who commit the sort of atrocities that make one wish to kick off a crusade, giving us an excuse to have humans liberate the Sages once again, and to have our once-proud Dark Space Elves reduced to dancing girls and the equivalent to calculating eunuchs.

This gives us about 3000 years of history to add to the about 2000 years of human history, for a total of about 5000 years.  The relics from the dawn of this era, then, are worth about 200 points.  I’m honestly not sure that’s enough time (I had been hoping for something closer to 10,000 years of history).

To connect up with the rest of our history, Humanity wages war on the Merchants and their mercenary allies, and end up conquering the galactic center.  The Oracle cult is largely in charge of the growing Empire, culturally, but it’s splintering into two factions: One which still pursues the grand vision and the other that has begun to pursue short-term gain (If given a choice between a lifetime of glory, power and wealth, or a lifetime of misery that ensures the long-term benefits of the galaxy, some would choose the former over the latter), and the latter began to gain ground.  In the midst of this, a third faction, called the “Empty Path” had begun to agitate for a third future that they had uncovered, one which led to a point beyond which the Oracles, lacking Communion, could see: The rescue of the Sage Worlds from the Slave Empire.  The teachings of Communion had already begun to trickle into the Human empire, as the Sages often had to flee the depredations of the Slave Empire.  Eventually, the Far-Sighted oracles allied with the Empty Path against the Short-Sighted Oracles, and kicked off a crusade that rescued the Sages and pushed the Slave Empire back.  The Space Knights in charge converted to their more warlike vision of True Communion and founded a sort of Crusader State over the Sage Worlds: they represented the dominant political and military force, but the Sages there were free to practice as they had and to enjoy the protection of the space knights, in exchange for their wisdom and teachings.  This also exposed some space knights to the Dark Communion of the Dark Space Elves, and they formed a splinter group within the space knight order.

True Communion and the power of these Space Knights spread throughout the Human Empire, until the wicked Alexian king aligned himself more fully with the Short-Sighted oracles and seized on tales of Space Knight conspiracies, and Sage conspiracies as an excuse to engage in a pogrom against both, but the Far-Sighted Oracles, knowing that their victory would completely destroy the hope of the Galaxy, through their lot in with the Space Knights, and what followed was a war that shattered the unity of Humanity, killing off (or driving into hiding) the Alexian dynasty, splintering the space knight order, shattering their crusader state, and resulting in a balance of power between the Alexian houses that eventually resulted in the rise of the Republic.

Who gives a sh*t?

So, how does this impact the players?  Does it matter?  Do they care?

Well, for Brent, as a player, it doesn’t matter at all.  None of this is remotely necessary for him to understand the battle between Empire and Alliance, anymore than an Action hero who is stealing ancient Egyptian artifacts needs to know the history of Egypt.  He’s aware that there’s ancient history, and he’s cool with that.  For Brent as a GM, this is perhaps more interesting in that it supplies us with numerous Ancient Menaces that he can draw on for campaign ideas.

Willow, of course, will be fascinated by the history, as it presents an interesting story that we can fold into the very geography of space, and tie-backs into other, more modern factions.

Desiree will mostly find it interesting if it provides her with additional context for her character.  For her, this is the story of races, and how they came to be where they are.  The tragic fall of the once glorious Dark Space Elf empire might be particularly compelling, especially if she wants to play a Dark Space Elf princess.

This is arguably the most interesting for Bjorn (after Willow) as the main purpose of this whole history is to give us cool opponents to fight (the ancient menace of the Vampires) and to give us explanations behind our totally cool relics. The point for him, here, is that this explains some of his cool toys.

Psi-Wars History Part 2: The History of the Space Knight

Your father’s light saber. This is the weapon of a Jedi Knight. Not as clumsy or random as a blaster; an elegant weapon for a more civilized age. For over a thousand generations, the Jedi Knights were the guardians of peace and justice in the Old Republic. Before the dark times… before the Empire. 

-Obi-Wan Kenobi, A New Hope

Now that we’ve settled on the basic outlines of the history of the Empire and how the Republic collapsed into autocracy, we’re left with some questions:

• How did the republic form in the first place?
• Who are the aristocrats who dominated the republic and where did they come from?
• What did the military look like before the domination of our charismatic general?

But I, personally, have a question that I think is far more pressing and likely to be asked by your players, even Brent, more often than any of the above:

• “What about the Space Knights?” 

Where do they come from?  Where did they go? Why are they gone?  What where they like?  Are they still around?  How?  And why do they seem to be suddenly making a comeback?

Star Wars has some answers for this: The Jedi Order was, like, always there, until their enemy, the Sith, took over and used Order 66 to kill them all, and this was like 10 years ago, but now the Jedi are already legends.

Personally, this doesn’t sit well with me.  To me, when I heard that line above in A New Hope, I envisioned something Arthurian, this ancient order who had vanished centuries ago but somehow still had a few masters scattered across the Galaxy, if only you could find them and revive the good old ways.  

Then, the real question this history has to answer is: “How to religious orders fall?”

Finding Inspiration

As usual, we need to dig up history and see what we can find.  George Lucas primarily drew inspiration from the Knights Templar and the samurai, and we can do the same, but once again, I think we can do something different, even with the same source material, than what George Lucas did.

More to the point, the Jedi Knight seems to be a blending of the concept if a knight, in the sense of a noble warrior who wields an elegant weapon and regularly practices martial arts, and a warrior monk, someone deeply dedicated to a mystical or religious ideal, withdrawn from life, who also dedicated himself to the arts of war.  To understand the space knight, we should look at both elements in detail.

The Samurai

Prior to the 15th and 16th centuries, do you know what the favoured weapon of the samurai was? It certainly wasn’t the katana, the broad sword, or any other type of sword. In fact, there’s no mention whatsoever of the sword as the “soul of the samurai” prior to a statement made by Tokugawa Ieyasu at the beginning of the 17th century. Prior to this time, the samurai were in fact mounted archers who were highly skilled with the bow and arrow, occasionally using other weapons if necessary. For the greater part of their history, the sword was not an important weapon to the samurai. 

–Samurai: Myth vs Reality

Whenever I dig through samurai stuff, especially the pop-documentaries on youtube, they’re quick to point out that the sword “was never” the key weapon of the samurai, but that they “actually” fought primarily with spear and bow, just like most soldiers throughout history.  The problem with this statement is that it pins down a single, specific era, points to it, and claims that this is what “real” samurai were (though the quote above is smart enough to limit itself to a specific period in time).  In fact, samurai have evolved throughout time, and this fact is key to drawing inspiration to the rise and fall of our own samurai-inspired space-knights.

If you’ll allow a brief detour through history: The title “samurai” started as a low-level bureaucratic position, one step below the courtiers and aristocrats that dominated the Heian-era courts.  At the same time, the Emperor made use of regional clan warriors, mounted archers for the most part, to fight his wars, and slowly these clan-warriors began to take over most of these low level positions and, through their strength of arms and practical importance to the empire, overtake the more ritualistic aristocracy in importance, giving rise to the shogunate.

The shogunate was unable to keep a lid on the increasingly decentralized power of the various samurai clans, who regularly bickered and battled with one another, and when a succession crisis spawned into a succession war, it triggered a general free-for-all throughout Japan, resulting in the Sengoku-Jidai, the warring states era so famous in Japanese lore and legend, when samurai were samurai.  This is the era referred to above, when the bow and the spear dominated the battlefield, and this era saw the rise of the firearm in japan (One source I read claimed that Japan had more firearms in their country at the end of the war than Europe did).

Samurai were, in this era and in the previous, similar to knights or, really, any aristocratic warrior.  In these days, the centralized power didn’t arm and armor its armies, but called them up and expected them to be armed.  Those who could afford to arm and armor themselves especially well could usually also afford to arm and armor some local men too, and bring an army with them.  Aristocrat warriors are, thus, men who can afford better gear than everyone else, and have more spare time to practice with said gear, and can then turn around and use that superior arms and training to either oppress peasantry or wage war on a king’s behalf (and, in both ways, improve his income and thus his access to arms and training).

When the Sengoku Jidai ended, the katana/wazikashi combination (the daisho) would come to define the samurai because the shogunate made it so.  Weapons had proliferated throughout Japan during the era, and the Shogunate demanded that all peasants turn in their swords, but samurai were allowed to keep them as marks of their station.  This era, the Edo era, gives us the image of the kimono-clad samurai wearing his daisho in his obi, and suddenly drawing them to cut down his opponent in one, swift blow. The samurai wore that daisho as a badge of their status, especially if they’d fallen on hard times. Sure, that rapscallion over there might look as unkempt as any ruffian, with his shaggy hair and shoddy kimono, but he wears daisho, so you know he’s really a samurai.

This marks the next evolution of most of our aristocrat warriors.  The centralized power cannot afford to have loads of armed men running around the country, but he also knows better than to kick off an armed revolt by demanding that this powerful class surrender their power.  So, he honors them gives them what they want (guarantees of wealth and prestige) and removes the need to fight.  Their role becomes ceremonial, and they maintain the badge of their office: the sword.  Why the sword?  Well, Lindybeige has some interesting commentary on that.  In essence, the sword, unlike the spear or the bow or the axe, has no real purpose outside of the killing of others.  Simply wearing it around people who are not allowed to wear one emphasizes that you carry the power of life and death over them.  This is cemented by the practice of iajutsu, which is not particularly effective against an armored opponent, but is an excellent way to cut down an impertinent peasant and then eleganty clean your blade.  The sword and your mastery of it emphasizes your station, even if you are not an active participant in war any more.

The next major era for the samurai is the modern one, especially World War 2 and the rise of chambara cinema.  Neither featured real samurai, but the myth and mystique of these warriors.  This might seem an irrelevant notion to the historicity of the samurai, but much of what we think of as “bushido” or “the way samurai fight” comes from these stories, legends and exaggerations.  This also matters because, first of all, the Jedi are based on these myths, and not on the reality of the samurai and, second, the notion of a mythical warrior hailing from a golden era of chivalry and honor is a key aspect to the mythos of the Jedi, and thus our space knights.  They wield more elegant weapons of a more civilized age, before the random barbarism of this, our fallen modern era.  More than anything, our Space Knights need to evoke this ideal.

The Knights Templar (and other Knightly Orders)

Today, the survival and secret activities of the Knights Templar rival UFOs and the Kennedy assassination as atopic for conspiracy theory. Details vary from one account toanother, but most agree that the Templars are wealthy andpowerful, moving in the shadows to control governments andcorporations around the world.
-Graeme Davis, Pyramid #3-86: Organizations, “The Knights Templar”

Myths and lies swirl around the Crusades into Europe, but few elements of the Crusades inspire more mythology than the Knights Templar.  George Lucas definitely drew some of his ideas for the Jedi Order (an Order of Knights) from the Knights Templar, especially including their precipitous and likely unfair fall.

A brief introduction: The Knights Templar came after the Crusades had established a foothold in the Holy Land.  Europe fought the Crusades, ostensibly, to ensure that Christians could make their pilgrimages to Jerusalem, but the road to the Holy Land was still fraught with troubles, especially banditry.  9 knights forswore allegiance to any king and swore allegiance to the Pope himself and offered to the King of Jerusalem to protect pilgrims from the plights of banditry, etc, and he allowed them to take the Temple Mount as their headquarters, hence the “Knights of the Temple of Solomon,” or the Knights Templar.

Or possibly, they didn’t.  Most historians note that the Templars, ten years after their supposed founding, went to a monk, Bernard of Clairvaux, who had already established one monastic order and “asked him for help” in setting up their rules and gaining the Pope’s stamp of approval, which St. Bernard did, and wrote a treatise praising this “new form of Knighthood,” whereupon the Templars suddenly had a huge influx of members.  Given the close ties between Bernard and the founders of the Templars and a lack of evidence of their presence in Jerusalem before this point, many historians (Including Graeme Davis) argue their origin story is a bit of retroactive storytelling to make the order seem more mythical and to get a cool PR boost.

The Templars seemed to have a complicated relationship with Islam.  Kingdom of Heaven depicts them as fanatical enemies of Islam, willing to provoke suicidal wars, and I can find some evidence for that.  On the other hand, one of the accusations leveled at the Templars during their dissolution was that they were secret Muslims (“Baphomet,” the God they supposedly secretly worshipped, might be a French variation of Mohammed), and I can find evidence that they were respectful of Islamic customs and that they even had dealings with the Hashashin.

In any case, it was this focus on pilgrims that earned them the respect of Europe and resulted in their downfall.  Pilgrims would entrust their money to the Templars (who had proven themselves to be exceptionally honorable), and the Templars would re-imburse the Pilgrim upon his arrival in the Holy Land.  Thus, a pilgrim could travel safe in the knowledge that his money could not be stolen, and the Templars themselves had the ability to act as a bank, meaning they had more than enough liquid capital to expand their influence and power, which they did.  However, eventually King Philip IV “the Fair” of France needed to repay his crushing debts, and one of his various tactics was to accuse the Templars of withering heresies, kill the order and take all of their stuff.

From here, the Templars pass from history and into mythology.  The most common story I’ve found is that the Templars who escaped Philip’s pogrom became the founders of Free Masonry or various other conspiracies, especially against the Kings of France.  This idea of a secret conspiracy of knights working against the order of the day reshapes how one might see the Jedi Order: If they really were conspiring against the Republic (or for whatever their secret aims were), that totally changes the tone of the Emperor’s actions.

Another common story, one echoed by tales of the Crusades themselves, is that the Templars brought back some great secret or power with them from the Holy Land.  We have this idea that the Crusades allowed ideas to flow between the Middle East and Europe, and this is probably untrue (most of those ideas were already flowing from al-Andalus to France), but it’s an interesting idea we can borrow for our Space Knights nonetheless.

For me, one of the more interesting elements of the Knights Templar, and other knightly orders, is their unusual relationship with the secular power-structures of the day.  The typical knight, like the typical samurai above, served his leige lord and lent military power to his state.  The monastic knights served no state.  They served their church.  This didn’t prevent them from controlling territory, however.  While the Templar never controlled, for example, the Crusader States, the Tuetonic Knights definitely controlled (and colonized!) some territory of their own.  We picture the Jedi as this peaceful order of sage-warriors, but I find this image of armed, armored and highly military men conquering a swath of territory in the name of a faith to be a particularly fascinating and very un-Jedi idea.  We’ll need some un-Jedi ideas to make our space knights feel unique.

And, of course, the other aspect of this religious-allegience is that the Knights Templar were more than knights, they were also monks.  Warrior-monks, specifically, which perfectly fits what the Jedi were and what our Space Knights need to be.

Warrior Monks: Sohei, Yamabushi, Ikko-Ikki, Shaolin and the First Earth Battalion

Wikipedia references all of the above, including the Knights Templar as “Warrior Monks.  The last is particularly interesting:

Channon spent time in the 1970s with many of the people in California credited with starting the Human Potential Movement, and subsequently wrote an operations manual for a First Earth Battalion. The manual was a 125-page mixture of drawings, graphs, maps, polemical essays, and point-by-point redesigns of every aspect of military life. Channon imagined a new battlefield uniform that would include pouches for ginseng regulators, divining tools, food stuffs to enhance night vision, and a loudspeaker that would automatically emit “indigenous music and words of peace.”

This is referenced in “The Men Who Stare At Goats,” which is a book detailing the CIA’s efforts to creation psychic spies, assassins and soldiers.  In principle, then, the First Earth Battalion was a new age military, in the sense of spooky psychic powers, inner enlightenment and so on, which makes it a fascinating blend between New Age mysticism (on the rise during the same era in which Star Wars was first released: the 1970s) and Cold War psychic experimentation, the likes of which we see in Psi-Ops, the Mind Gate Conspiracy, which makes a fascinating alternative to the warrior-monks of the Jedi.

More in the vein of our classic perception of the warrior-monk are  the warrior monks of Japan, the Sohei, and to understand them, I need to make a brief foray into the religious landscape of Japan.  By the Heian period, Japan imported Buddhism from China in the form of the Tendai sect, which enjoyed the patronage of the court and aristocracy.  To protect their own, and to intimidate rival sects, some of the monks of the Tendai sect, especially from the temple Enryaku-ji just outside Kyoto (the Capital of Japan at the time) took up arms.  They seem to have worn the same sort of armor and fought in largely the same way that samurai did, though traditionally with a greater focus on the naginata over the katana.  It might be better to think of these warrior monks as more akin to the knights templar, as they seem very similar to samurai, except with a strong religious focus.

Two sects split off from the Tendai sect.  The first is the Shugendo sect, which is a highly syncretic faith that blends Tendai teachings with shinto traditions, and their monks travel high into the mountains to practice extreme asceticism in pursuit of supernatural powers.  These “mountain men”h the yamabushi, needed to be masters of combat to survive the harsh, bandit-ridden mountains of Japan.

The second major sect I want to discuss rose to prominence during the Sengoku Jidai, Jodo Shinshu, “Pure Land” Buddhism.  The founder promoted a new way to find enlightenment and escape what he believed to be a fallen, degenerate world, in a way that was remarkably easy: simple prayer and deep faith.  In contrast to the more expensive rituals and aristocratic patronage of Tendai buddhism, Jodo Shinshu appealed to the common man and the poorer samurai (one might draw a parallel between Catholicism and militant Lutheranism).  The followers of Jodo Shinshu began to come together for the same reason Tendai Buddhists would take up arms: self-defense (at first) and then to intimidate or defeat rival sects.  But the fundamental character of these “warrior monks” differed from previous ones as these were commoners.  These more closely resembled peasant uprisings or village militia than well-trained armies.  The name “Ikko-ikki” means “Ikko-shu uprising” with “ikko-shu” being a reference to Jodo Shinsu.

In all cases, like the Crusading Orders, these warrior-monks weren’t associated with a secular power, but with religious thought.  Thus, while a samurai owned the land and was fundamentally attached to it, and thus concerned with borders, a temple could be placed nearly anywhere; in fact, where samurai demanded taxes, buddhist sects usually just requested donations and their followers themselves would put up their (sometimes heavily fortified) temples.  And also, like the crusading orders, while they did not need territory, they sometimes ended up carving out religious states anyway, such as Kaga province in the Sengoku period.  Finally, while I’ve discussed the sohei indimidating rival sects, buddhism of all sects taught pacifism, and sohei generally took up arms in self-defense (like the Jedi), and only when it was clear that they were a force to be reckoned with did, occasionally, ambition run ahead of moral qualms.

The last of the warrior monk orders that I want to point to are the monks of the Shaolin monastary, whom I’m sure need no further introduction.  You can read all about them in GURPS martial arts.  Like our Japanese warrior-monks, these warrior-monks were also buddhist, and they primarily learned martial arts for self-defense (though they would later adjust their theology retroactively to justify it); The primary thing I want to draw your attention to is, like the Knights Templar, they were destroyed and scattered by a secular power, the Qing Dynasty, and like the Knights Templar, legends state that some of them survived and scattered into the world.  These five elders of Shaolin (including a nun!) supposedly spread their martial arts knowledge throughout China and a variety of martial arts school love to claim one of these legendary elders as the ultimate founder of their style, including Wing Chun, the ancestor of Bruce Lee’s Jeet Kun Do.

The History of Space Knights

Designing the History of Space Knights

The nature of our heroic space knights seem fairly clear, at least if we draw from history.  Space knights are probably a fully military order, or at least they might have been in the past and now currently rely on their privileged position to act as more of a political force, carrying force swords more as a badge of office than as a weapon (though they can certainly use it as such).  Religious space knights, in contrast to standard space knights, would serve no secular power, no Empire and no Republic, but instead serve their religion, protecting their followers, which may or may not bring them into conflict with other secular powers or other religious factions.  And, if we really want to follow the history of the Templars and the Jedi, then they’ve been dissolved, which rather makes sense given their refusal to bend knee to a secular power, but they still live on, in the form of scattered members who teach their arts, and in the form of secretive conspiracies.  I’d also like to note that all of these groups rise from exposure to foreign ideas: Buddhism (an Indian religion) in Japan and the culture and religions of the Middle East for the Templars (some scholars speculate that Templars might have been closet Muslims, or secretly Jewish, or had incorporated some early Christian ideas into their faith).

Designing the History of the Galactic Federation

But we cannot build the history of our space knights without building the history of the world around them.  What is the world of the Space Knight like?  I prefer this era be a far older one.  The Nazis like to draw on the imagery of the Teutonic Knights who vanished in the late medieval period, and the Soehei had their origins in the Genpai wars and the Heian period, the more legendary era of Japan (at least from the perspective of the Sengoku-Jidai).  Our space knights, then, come from a more civilized era.  While Star Wars placed this in the Republic (literally “before the Empire”), I want to place it back further than that.  The space knight is an heir to the galactic age of heroes, before the complexities of the modern era.

Japan already gives us a pretty good clue to how this might look.  The Heian period was one dominated by a central authority, an emperor, from whom legitimacy flowed.  Even the samurai clans claimed descent from him, but as his power waned, first he had a shogun step in as the power behind the throne, and then even that failed and led to an era of strife and dissolution in the Sengoku-Jidai.  What would have happened, I wonder, if Nobunaga and his heirs hadn’t reunified Japan?  The various clans seemed willing to bicker interminably and it might have taken an external force to unify everyone again.

Rome follows a remarkably similar track, though most of its early (pre-390 BC) is shrouded in mythology, thanks to the loss of its records.  Supposedly, its early period was one of kings (7 kings, 6 of whom were righteous and the 7th, who was not).  Rome so feared the return of a king that it used that fear to justify the murder of politicians it disagreed with, and we can definitely use that parallel in our Galactic Republic.  Thus, before there was a Galactic Republic, there was a “Galactic Kingdom.”  This makes sense actually, since we want elites that conflict with the people, and we can use the aristocracy of this earlier era as their source.

Why use space knights, though?  Why not use soldiers?  Well, I’ve already hinted at this with the design of my weaponry.  This entire era is set in TL 11^, but we’re looking at a very long TL 11^ period, up to 10,000 years.  Early TL 11^ might look different than modern TL 11^, and we’ve already seen some of those differences.  First, blasters have improved substantially since the earliest era, while force swords seem to have remained fairly static.  If earlier blasters were weak, but armor relatively strong, then being fully armed and armored might make more sense, since you can reasonably wade through blaster fire and then cut down your opponent with your force sword.  We could further justify it if we made ships more valuable targets.  Perhaps early Hyperdrives were huge, and thus the ships of war were similarly large.  A good tactic in battle back them might have been to smash into enemy ships and board directly, fighting to capture them, rather than destroy them (which fits with inferior weapons).  Thus, having an elite cadre of expensively-armed super-soldiers who could board an enemy warship and take it was definitely worth having.

Then we need some foreign faith or religion that can filter into our growing kingdom, and that faith is obviously Communion.  Space Knights waging war in some alien territory could have come into contact with the faith of Communion and seen how much more powerful it was than the base psionic powers of this early era and converted.  This would have been a more peaceful faith and the space knights might have discarded their secular authorities in favor of protecting this faith that was sweeping over the kingdom.

Why did they die, then, and what happened to them?  Rome gives us a clue again, and we can still blend it with Japan, especially 13 Assassins.  Eventually, the Space King lost his way and became a monster and when the Space Knights turned against him, he fabricated evidence proving they had “fallen to the dark side” and been co-opted by a sinister conspiracy.  He moved against them to secure his position and to silence their voice, but instead, he instigated a huge war that saw the destruction and scattering of the Space Knights, but also shattered the peace of the kingdom.  Some rose up in defense of the space knights, other simply seized the opportunity to expand their own power base, and especially when the wicked king died, there was a succession crisis followed by succession crisis until the constant bickering wore everyone down, left the galaxy divided into armed camps.  Finally, some external threat convinced them to re-unite and careful diplomacy restored ties between the various powers and formed a new republic: rather than one house ascendant over an other, all the houses of the old kingdom would have a right to vote on things, thus the republic restored equality across the galaxy… if you were noble.

As for the space knights, they faded into legend, but scattered members still existed across the galaxy, watching over the growing republic and trying to maintain order where they could.  Their conspiratorial power grew sufficiently that by the time of the Empire, they’ve begun to unmask themselves as a force that can restore the galaxy to its former glory and stave off impending doom.

To design this history, we can use GURPS Fantasy to give us a full sweep of history.  This covers the rise of humanity from “City States,” small regional powers, to a complete Empire, then a degeneration, followed by a dark age and then a new awakening into a new, more tenuous and liberal Empire, followed by the collapse into autocracy and civil war, where we find ourselves today.

The History of the Galaxy, part 2

The first step would be to touch on the origins of humanity, but I’d rather not do that.  Let’s do what Foundation and Dune do and suggest that the origins of humanity have been lost to the sands of time (If pressed, I would suggest that if this was the far future, Earth wasn’t particularly conducive to hyperspace travel, and it became so much easier to travel between colonies than from colonies to the Earth that eventually Earth just faded from history, just as our own origins in Africa isn’t really relevant to modern politics).

Our early history sees the rise of three major regional powers (or perhaps 5, but 3 is a good number, following our law of threes).  First, we have a culture of space explorers and pioneers, a simple people who focus on spreading across space and maintaining their independence (Let’s call them the “Old Westerly” civilization).Second, we have a more scientific and technological group, the “Rationalists” who were one of the oldest powers (Let’s call them the “Shinjurai” civilization), who represent a more common interpretation of sci-fi.  Finally, we have a those who mastered the art of ESP and precognition, allowing them to be forewarned about problems and to plan strategies based on the future.  This made them a more mystical people and they preferred to fight with force blade, force shield and armor, giving them something of a space fantasy vibe (Let’s call them the “Maradon” civilization).  First, these city states struggled for dominance, and the Maradon civilization won, establishing an Empire, with a semi-divine Emperor from the House of Alexus (or Xandrus?) whose bloodline was prophesied to bring peace to all the galaxy.  His direct descendants ruled over the empire (especially chose chosen by the order of oracles who protected knowledge of the future), while his more remote offspring were married off to the lesser warlords of the Maradon Empire, who were given dominion over worlds in return for military service.

The Maradon Empire expanded its power out into more alien space and came into contact with very ancient civilization and their faith of Communion, which began to spread throughout the galaxy, rapidly supplanting the closed and secretive oracular order, especially among the people and the lesser nobility.  Many of those lesser nobles set aside their military service and joined the ranks of Communion, protecting it from an alien invasion that pushed in from the rim of the Galaxy and gaining the trust of many of the nobles of the Dynasty, especially thanks to the vastly superior power they wielded through Communion, but also due to their honorable and peaceful ways (required by their careful adherence to the principles of Communion).

As wars died down, the nobility began to put down its more powerful weapons and a more elegant age arouse, but this era saw religious/philosophical strife.  The oracular order struggled with its increasing irrelevance, and saw a split in its ranks from those who adhered to original plan for the future and those who began to peddle prophecy for political gain and power, especially in the fight against Knights of Communion and their powerful faith.  Meanwhile, the Knights of Communion’s ranks were infiltrated with darker, more dangerous and older ideals, creating a dangerous splinter group and a war within the ranks (our Sith).  The increasingly corrupt oracular order, which had supplanted the orthodox branch of the oracular order as the primary genetic advisors of the dynasty (ensuring that the lineage stayed on track), had allowed the Great Plan to go awry, and the kings on the Alexian throne grew increasingly totalitarian and mad.  

With the splintering of the Knights of Communion, the corrupt Oracular Order saw their chance and conspired with their mad king to strike.  He rounded up the leadership of the order, accused them of the crimes of their splinter order, and outlawed the order.  This resulted in a general uprising of Communion-faithful, and triggered a war with the remnants of the Knights of Communion, who managed to slay the corrupt Emperor, but had their own power shattered in the process.  Without even their vision to guide the galaxy, everything began to spiral out of control as the various houses each warred to take the throne and to overthrow the wicked legacy of the corrupt Alexian emperors, but no side could gain the upper-hand until a group of Alexian houses (5? 7?) reached a sort of balkanized equilibrium (we can also add in some of the previously suppressed groups, like the Rationalists, who had now thrown off the yoke of Alexian dominion).

Let’s say from the rise to the fall of the Alexian dynasty took about 1000 years, which is comparable to the Western Roman Empire.

Galactic politics in the core remained in this way, technology and stability slowly degenerating until a serious alien threat from the Rim forced them to realign.  Let’s say this war and struggle took about 300 years.  No individual house could stand against the threat, and careful diplomacy encouraged everyone to come together and face this threat, and out of this unity, the Republic (Federation? Alliance?) was born.  They would have no kings, and each house/government/state would have a vote, with their elites theoretically representing the people of their worlds and systems.

The Federation that arose from this, if it lasted about 300 years before decaying into the Empire, which if we combine with about 500 years of a slow rise of mankind, gives us about 2100 years of history (The relics from the dawn of this age would be worth about 100 character points).

Who gives a sh*t?

So, let’s look at how this impacts our players.

Brent doesn’t need to know any of this, and that makes him happy.  This is all information buried beneath the surface, and the galactic civil war is not directly caused by it.  If he wants to know what happened to the Space Knights, we have a fairly simple answer for him: “They used to be protectors of True Communion, but were scattered and destroyed by a corrupt King and have been lurking behind the scenes ever since.”

Willow is delighted to have all of this history, especially as it will act as a foundation for our later design of galactic “geography” and it also explains the politics of the Republic/Empire in a reasonable way.  It also offers plenty to explore, and plenty of inspiration.

For Desiree, lost kingdoms, conspiratorial powers, ancient orders and noble houses all offer her something she can attach her character to.  These houses still remain in the present and so she can be a princess of one of those houses, or adhere to some lost sect, etc.  Ancient enmities still presumably exist, so they can drive her character, and make the history of her personal house or sect interesting to her.

These houses, sects and groups can also serve as a container for cool new powers, which is something Bjorn will enjoy.  By having five splintered groups of the Knights of Communion, and groups like the Rationlists, the two branches of the Oracular Order, and the specific houses with, perhaps, their own martial arts and technologies, he has a bevy of setting-grounded mechanical options to explore.

Psi-Wars History Part 1: The History of the Empire

So this is how liberty dies. With thunderous applause. 

-Padme Amidala, Revenge of the Sith

When you design a setting element, or a story, or a hook you’ll use to inspire yourself later, you should try to build a question into them, some element you want to explore and touch on, or let your players explore.  I would argue that all of the Star Wars prequels revolve around the question of “How did the Republic become the Empire?”

George Lucas answered that question with a bit of Roman and German history, plus his own personal political philosophy.  I also thoroughly believe that George Lucas wanted us to ponder this question ourselves and relate it to our daily lives, which quite a few people have certainly done, with gusto, in regards to the recent elections, if my Google Search for the above quote is any indication.

I’d like to revisit that question, using much of the same inspiration that George Lucas had, and show you how we can come to a very different conclusion than he did.  I want to revisit how democracies die, and more than that, I want to look at the broader implications of the histories from which George Lucas drew his inspiration, and use that to expand the setting beyond the narrow scope Star Wars has.

How do Democracies Die?

Preamble: Some Definitions

First, I want to define some terms here, terms which Star Wars definitely abuses, and that we often take for granted or abuse ourselves when discussing these things.

Sovereign state: A state which controls a region inside which a government can enforce laws of its choosing.  The United States of America is a sovereign state, in that England can’t decide what our taxation levels are or dictate whether or not we’re allowed to have capital punishment, etc.  Scotland, on the other hand, is not a sovereign state, as the United Kingdom can tell Scotland what to do, or who it’s at war with, whether or not it’s part of the EU, etc.

Nation: A large body of people unified by shared ancestry, culture, language, etc. Jews are a nation.  So are the Dutch, or the French, or Russians, etc.  The modern world is really big into nationalism, which means that a single nation should be self-governing and thus have its own state.  There are nation-states, and when we talk about things like “Black Nationalism” what that really means is this idea that African-Americans are a group with shared ancestry, culture and language distinct from that of other Americans, and thus should be self-governing.  “Nation” does not mean “state,” though we often treat it as synonymous.

Empire: A group of states and nations rules by a single powerful group or individual.  This might have an “emperor,” but it could just as easily be ruled by, say, parliament (for example, the British Empire).  You’ll occasionally see people describing the USA as “an empire” which makes no sense if they mean an autocracy, but they usually mean it in the sense that the US controls external states.  For example, if the USA were to essentially appoint foreign presidents and demand that they change their laws or foreign affairs to suit US interests (say, in Iraq or Afghanistan), then the US might be a de facto Empire.  I say this not because I believe that the US is an empire, but to hammer home the fact that an empire doesn’t have to be autocratic, which are two different things.

Autocracy: A government in which power is held by a single individual

Democracy: A government in which power is held by the whole of the citizenry

When we say things like “The Roman republic died and became an empire”, what we really mean is how democracy (used loosely) fell and autocracy rose in its place.  The Roman Republic was already an empire, in that it ruled over other nations, and it ruled over states that were no longer sovereign.

This is an important distinction for discussing the “fall of the Galactic Republic” because it means that the Galactic Republic was also probably already an empire, at least in the sense that it had a multitude of nations under its sovereignty.  That might be stretching the definition of an empire: after all, if an alien nation has representation in the galactic senate, then you can’t really say that the republic is overriding their sovereignty, rather everyone has shared soveriegnty  If that’s the case, then the switch legitimately happened when the Emperor seized the sovereignty of the nations under his dominion.  But what if that had already begun long before an Emperor climbed upon his throne?

How Democracies Die: an Instructional Video

The above video is probably the best summation I’ve found on the sweeping rules for politics, and it’s one I’ll revisit when building out the Empire and the Alliance, but what I want you to note foremost is the last bit explaining how democracies fall into dictatorships.  Allow me to reiterate for those who don’t want to watch the video, and to set up some points.

First, a democracy’s power is its people.  The wealth you gain, the wealth you need, comes from the virtuous circle of a well-educated, independent populace.  If you threw all of your computer programmers and rocket scientists and doctors into slave labor camps, the wealth they’d generate digging coal out of the ground is far less than the wealth you’d generate just by letting them do what they were going to do and taxing them.  It’s a fools bargain.  Moreover, you want a certain standard of living: plentiful food, good educational opportunities for your kids, a chance to travel the world, etc.  The chances of you getting that by rising up and revolting against your democracy are pretty thin and your chances of getting that while sticking within the system are decent (at least, better than they would be with open revolt or seizing power).

Something has to change this.  The system itself must be sufficiently undermined that by following the system, you no longer believe you can get the things you want.  Furthermore, the situation needs to change sufficiently that you believe you can make more money by undermining the democracy you have.  If, suddenly, slave labor camps become more profitable than taxation, then why not?

It’s nice to think that a government that Goes Too Far will eventually cause the citizens to rise in righteous wrath and throw the rascals out. It’s also convenient when all the defenders of the Evil Empire wear uniforms (except for the occasional Secret Police spy). Unfortunately, we know from centuries of experience that it doesn’t really work this way. The worst tyrannies imaginable have been enthusiastically supported by people no worse than you or me   

-GURPS Space “Why People Support Rotten Empires”

The truth is, nobody just becomes a dictator.  People work with the dictator to make it happen.  Soldiers side with the rising dictator, politicians step out of the way, people willingly join the new secret police and spread the word about how great Dear Leader is.  But they have to do this for a reason.  GURPS Space discusses this on page 197, but we need to dive deeper if we want to understand why people would let their democracy go and embrace autocracy in its place.

Star Wars doesn’t address any of this.  In Star Wars, you have a perfectly fine democracy, then there’s a war, and an evil Sith uses his space magic to trick everyone and becomes Galactic Space Emperor.  Then, inexplicably, he’s able to dissolve the senate, has loads of fanatical soldiers willing to die in droves against our plucky heroes, and so on, without any explanation why.  The galactic war might have been terrible, but surely they’ve had wars before without going all fascist on everyone instantly.  I personally think George Lucas’ vision comes from a rather unfortunate meme about how “hypnotic” Adolf Hitler was, as though he was able to “trick” the German people into supporting him.

The real picture is more complicated.

The Fall of the Roman Republic: A Case Study

Death of Julius Caesar

I’ll allow you to study the history of the fall of the Roman Republic on your own.  There are plenty of resources out there.  Just hit up some of my sources back in my history post.  Allow me to sum it up.

Rome had a very rocky history, and went through a period of nearly non-stop warfare, a sort of a bloody tournament where (especially at the end of the Punic Wars), it staggered out, suddenly king of the hill, and owner of a vast empire and an enormous influx of slave labor.  What killed the Roman Republic, if I can oversimplify, wasn’t an existential threat (though those definitely popped up), but the overwhelming stress of wealth and success.

The Roman system had been built on the idea of shared land.  It even drew its military ranks from landed farmers, a requirement by law.  To be a legionnaire, you had to own a farm and to bring your own equipment.  Yes, there was an aristocracy (the Patrician class) and an oppressed lower class (the Plebians), but largely, they worked together (see the Secession of the Plebs) and conquered lands were shared among all Romans.  In theory.

In fact, what really happened was that legionnaires would often go bankrupt during these increasingly long wars and Patricians would buy up their land, and collect the land that was being conquered.  Soon, the Patrician class had huge tracts of land… and slaves to work it.  The contract between aristocrat and commoner broke down, because the aristocrat no longer needed the commoner.  Thus, we reached a situation where our “keys to power” begin to narrow.  This also meant that the Romans had less and less men they could call upon to serve in their armies… but then Gaius Marius passed a reform that revoked the land-owning requirement.  Suddenly, anyone could join, and the general himself would pay you.  That made you loyal to your general, who would make promises about land grants or all the loot you could steal once he sacked a city.  This is a dangerous combination, so dangerous that by the time of Julius Caesar, the first triumverate consisted of himself (an influential and charismatic politician), Crassus (a spectacularly wealthy Roman who once said “You can’t really call yourself rich unless you can afford an army”) and Pompey the Great, a mighty and popular general.  The three of them together had sufficient power to effectively run roughshod over the entire Roman government.  That’s how far things had fallen by then.

So we have the ingredients for our fall in that the keys to power have narrowed.  You no longer need the power of your whole people, because you’ve found a resource more valuable than your people: Slaves and conquered land.  But what undermined the system?

Rome regularly faced invasion, and quite a few were terrifying enough to keep Romans up at night, such as the Cimbrian War which seemed to come out of nowhere (something, by the way, that could easily happen in a huge galaxy full of hyperdrive-capable ships: a whole section of ignored, backwater worlds could band together and “suddenly” start invading from the Rim, catching everyone off guard).  But what really tore Rome apart was political violence.

It’s easy to imagine the aristocracy as the bad guy in this story, and they definitely were.  Again and again someone would stand up for Plebian rights, or rights for the Italian Allies, or whatever, and the Patrician class would beat them down, often literally.  The first man to be elected Dicator for Life was a man who served the Patrician class and purged (ie murdered) those who supported Plebian rights, Lucius Cornelius Sulla, but he stepped down.  He felt his only purpose was to preserve democracy and the constitution.  He saw himself as a strong-man “just doing what needed to be done.”

So, Julius Caesar?  Who was he then?  He was an advocate for the plebians.  He was what we would call a demagogue.  He was a successful general who beat back the dreaded Gauls, who won victory after victory, spoke for the little man, and whom the Senate (the Patricians) intended to arrest.  He was the rebel, and he won, and when he did, when he marched on Rome and seized the role of dictator, he did just what Sulla had and pushed through a bunch of (what he felt were) necessary reforms, but this time, reforms for the people, reforms that took power from the aristocracy.  And for that, they killed him.

The result was a mass uprising against the Senate.  When his adopted son, Gaius Octavius, rode in and waged war on the Senate, the people supported him and flocked to his banner, because he was avenging a martyr, a great man who had died in their service.  When he became Emperor, renaming himself Augustus Caesar, of course they supported it and even deified him.  He was going to fix everything for them.

Of course, he didn’t.  Demagogues rarely do.  But it paints a very different picture from Star Wars, doesn’t it?

The Fall of the Wiemar Republic: A Case Study

Before I jump into this well-worn topic, I want to discuss something I think most documentaries completely leave off: German nationalism and its roots.  The idea that the Nazi party was German nationalism run amok is pretty ingrained into the popular consciousness, but we don’t really stop and think about what that means.  The idea, as noted above, is that the “German people” are absolutely a thing, and that they should be allowed to govern themselves, which doesn’t sound so bad, if you think about it, because it isn’t.

Germany was a very young country by this point.  The German Unification finished in 1871, and before that date, it had been a divided bunch of principalities.  We didn’t speak of Germany, but of Bavaria and Bohemia, and the Ruritanian romance was set in a fantasy-version of these little tiny kingdoms.  Until Wilhelm I of Prussia united it, there was no Germany to speak of.

Except, there sort of was.  The people of these various principalities shared language (not perfectly, you understand, but they could speak to one another) and culture, and there’s a reason Wilhelm wanted those countries and not, say, deep into Eastern Europe or chunks of France.  Germany, as an idea, had already begun to form.  France and England and Poland and various other countries already were nations, but Germany was just coming around to this idea of having its own national identity.

Then World War 1 happened.  Even before that, European powers had been frightened by the growing might of the German people, and a lot of that fear drove the treaty of Versailles.  Propaganda of the day had the German people as the “huns of Europe“. The idea here was that there shouldn’t be a German people, that the very idea was a threat to international order and the very idea should be quashed.  Not everyone shared this, of course.  Woodrow Wilson wanted more lenient terms for the treaty and thought that Germany should be given a chance to join the growing community of the West, and he wasn’t alone in this, but the French especially, horrified by the war, wanted Germany punished.

And punished Germany was.  The Wiemar Republic was imposed on the German people by external powers, but they did their best to pay the enormous reparations (as well as to reassure people that Germany was not a threat) they were required to pay, which resulted in fantastic strains on their economy, and Germany had to suffer the humiliation of France’s occupation of the Rhineland all the way up until 1930.  Two major strands of extremism rose up in response to this: extreme nationalism, which argued that Germany should not submit to the treaty, that Germany should be self-governing (or, more importantly, that the Wiemar Republic were puppets and that Germany wasn’t self-governing and should be), and that Germany didn’t have to apologize for being German, and Socialism, which argued wanted to overthrow the government for not doing enough to help the plight of the worker.  Both attempted overthrows, with the Communists attempting to create their Soviet Republic of Bavaria, and Hitler with his Beer Hall Putsch.  But, in the early part of this era, the Wiemar Republic actually, honorably, did the best it could, quietly attempting to renegotiate while inflating their currency to effectively reduce the crippling debt, and working with American banks to secure necessary loans.  There was also something of a cultural renaissance, which meant that the German people, and culture, was starting to change.  This was a good era (Germany’s own roaring 20s), but the crushing debts, the plight of the every-man and the slow changing of the culture didn’t set well with everyone.

Then came the Great Depression, which (long story short) really hammered the already struggling German economy.  The people struggled and under the strain, the Nazi party and the Communist parties made huge gains in the election, but neither had a majority.  Understand, then that people began to grow desperate.  The extremism offered by both were seen as alternatives to a system that evidently wasn’t working.  Even so, Hitler demanded the chancellorship and the government, eventually, decided to give it to him, as they thought they could control Hitler.  Instead, once Hitler had power he began to use it. Under the guise of cracking down on genuine extremism (it seems the communists really did start the Reichstag Fire), Hitler quietly jailed those who spoke out against him. Hitler also abandoned the Versailles treaty and thus the German economy rapidly recovered (because if you don’t pay your debts, you have plenty of money!).  The result was that people who strongly disagreed with Hitler found themselves quietly in prison (or worse) and those who were on the fence found their economic situation suddenly vastly superior.  The net result was a surge of popularity for the dictator.  Hitler even sold the argument that the Weimer Republic had been a puppet of a cabal of foreigners (including, of course, Jews and bankers, who were synonymous in this particular conspiracy theory), one that he would free them of with his “final solution.”

The point here is that there was a reason for Hitler’s rise, beyond “magical magnetism.”  Germany was poor and desperate and humiliated, the second of the reasons why a democracy falls: because “why not?”  If it seems that it can’t get worse, so why not go for a dictatorship?  Maybe a dictator could improve things! Or so the logic seems to inevitably go.  Most historians argue that the Versailles Treaty created the initial conditions for World War 2, which is another way of saying that the Versailles Treaty directly contributed to the rise of the Nazi party, which is not to say that they were inevitable, but once things got that bad a few strokes of luck and some clever manipulations were all they needed to put themselves over the top (it could as easily have been the communists who did this, and they tried, or the Weimar republic might have managed to hold on just a little longer).  Not magic, then, but skill and luck paired with the weight of history and bad decisions made by foreign powers.

The History of the Empire

Drawing Inspiration

Some obvious parallels leap out from both histories.  First, both democratic collapses had to do with the rise of populism.  That is, the common man’s needs weren’t met and he was regularly humiliated by his elites.  In the case of the Roman Republic, the Partrician class should have known better, but in the case of the Weimar Republic, blame for this lies at the foot of foreign powers (and the perception of elites who did not care).  We also see a rapidly changing culture in both cases, where the children see a completely different world than their parents.  This generation gap resulted in a push for “old time values”, a return to a perceived golden age.  And this was necessitated by an economic collapse and fear of foreign invasion.  While the Roman aristocracy hadn’t seen economic collapse, the common man certainly had, and they grew increasingly desperate.

And, of course, both gave rise to war, but two very different wars.  The war in the Roman Empire was a genuinely internal war.  That is, Romans waged war on Romans, just as in the Galactic Civil War, it’s the Republic at war with itself.  World War 2 was an entirely different beast, one of a power suddenly exerting itself after having long been held in economic chains.  If, however, we view Germany as “part of the West,” this idea of civil war makes a little more sense. Germany had been oppressed by “the elites” of the West, and when relief hadn’t come fast enough and they had grown desperate, they seized power and waged war.  That’s not an entirely fair assessment, because Germany was always the underdog here.  Nobody expected they could beat France as quickly as they did, or press England has hard as they did, and anyone whose played Axis and Allies knows how precarious Germany’s position really was (which isn’t helped by stupid decisions like the invasion of Russia).

I don’t mean to act as an apologist for Nazi Germany and I hope no one sees it that way, but rather, I wish to highlight that when democracies collapse, it’s seldom because there’s a bad guy conspiring against the democracy.  If someone came to you and whispered “Psst, hey, wanna overthrow the government?” most of you would tell the guy to buzz off.  Why waste your life overthrowing a flawed-but-useful institution that gives you a voice?  The problem comes when you have two sides that refuse to talk, or cannot talk, when one side attempts to strip the other of a voice.  In general, democracy dies long before its institutions do, because when compromise and mutual understanding dies, so too does democracy.

The ingredients for the rise of our empire are, thus:

• An intractable political conflict between status-quo elites and an increasingly desperate population
• A recent war still bright in the memory of the populace
• Economic and social turmoil
• At least one controversial, charismatic and ambitious figure who is martyred in some way (Julius Caesar was murdered for his reforms and ambition, and Hilter was imprisoned for his Beer Hall Putsch, though I think his charisma is over-stated)

Some additional elements we could draw on for inspiration:

• An elitist monster (like Sulla)
• An charismatic elitist hero (like Cato the Younger or Cicero)
• The foreign powers of our World War 2 (who is Russia?  Who is America?)
• A charismatic hero of the empire that, despite being a Nazi jerk, you can kind of agree with (Rommel)
• A beautiful femme fatale who becomes tangled with the Empire (Cleopatra)

The Actual History of the Empire, in brief

Let’s try for a first draft: we’ll revisit it later.

The Republic arose from careful concord between various regional powers in the galactic center.  The agreement gave each equal say in a galactic senate that doubled as a sort of more powerful UN, but it meant that only those who ruled those worlds, the aristocracy (who was largely interconnected already) had a vote, but not the millions of people under them (though perhaps we could give them some sort of special say, a Tribune of the People elected from their ranks?).  Think of it as a Federation, as defined by GURPS Space.

This growing interconnectedness and shared trade resulted in greater prosperity, but that prosperity began to slowly concentrate in the hands of the elite as robots rose up as a major industrial force.  Where before farms and factories would employ people, now they began to increasingly replace them with automated robot labor.  This itself wasn’t controversial, not at first, but the increasing economic disparity was.

Then, a horrific invasion occurred!  Some barbaric alien entity from outside of the galaxy surged in, leaving absolute destruction in its wake.  Because of some internal political struggle (What internal political struggle?), the Republic was slow to respond and nearly an entire galactic arm was devastated as they quibbled. The denizens of this arm, having lost a huge swathe of their population, turned to cybernetics and military robots to fend off the invasion.  This increased the relative power of robots throughout the region.

Finally, a charismatic general arose, codified the military in some new, centralized fashion, and took the war to the barbaric invasion and finally, at last, defeated them (but what happened to him afterwards?).

The increased power of the robots, the militarization of robots and the loss of human(oid) population in the technological galactic arm allowed a robot liberation movement to take off, and they founded the Cybernetic Union and declared independence.  The Galactic Republic, more focused on its internal struggle (and perhaps the rise of this popular new general) allowed them to secede and even promised relief payments, paid for by an increased tax on the human population, in exchange for peace (and the ability to continue to exploit their own robot populations).  

Faced with increased taxation as well as increased economic dislocation, the people began to protest, and the popular general took up the mantle of their grievances.  He argued against the use of robots as well as noting the increasingly totalitarian and aggressive stance of the Cybernetic Union.  Some of the elites agreed with him, but the majority did not, and he was arrested, tried and exucuted in the increasing political violence of the era. His heir (a literal son? An adopted heir? A symbolic successor), just as charismatic but with a completely different perspective and far less respect for the customs of the Republic (and more impressed with tales of heroism from bygone cultures and perhaps the space knights of yesteryear) rallied the people and the few elites that had sided with him, as well as the military that had served beneath the general that had slain the barbaric menace.  They seized power in the election, and then immediately forestalled another assassination attempt with a round of assassinations and more extreme laws of their own.

This fractured the empire, with the elites retreating down another, older arm of the galaxy and forming alliances with previously outcast aliens to retake their former position of power, while the Republic, now ruled directly by the son of the famous general, our emperor, purged the realm of robots, “rebel sympathizers” and whatever conspiratorial elements that had worked against him, and then instantly declared war on the Cybernetic union.

Now the Empire finds itself embroiled in two wars, one civil and one external, while the economic changes proposed by the Emperor have resulted in a huge influx of wealth to his key supporters and largely improved the lives of the everyman, making them increasingly loyal to him, but he’s enjoying the prestige and power his new position gives him, and becoming increasingly obsessed with secret conspiracies against him and the power of the lost space knights of yesteryear, while the former elites have been forced to moderate their tone, discussing “liberty” and “tolerance” that the Empire has been forced to abandon to favor the primarily human populace of the galactic core.

The Scale of Imperial History

How much time are we talking about?

If we assume the initial barbaric invasion conquered nearly an entire arm of the Galaxy, 10 years might be a fair number, from first reports of invasion to them knocking on the door to the galactic core.  Thereafter, it might take another 10 years to push them out.  During the first 5 years, it’s a joint effort between the Republic and the resistance in this galactic arm.  Therafter, that resistance collapses into in-fighting as the Republic makes a decisive victory against the barbarian horde.  This might seem like a long time, but it’s consistent with Genghis Khan’s defeat of the Western Xia and Jin dynasties in Japan, plus it gives us time for the barbaric menace to really mount, our heroic general to reform the military into a centralized power, and then to take the fight to them.

In the next 10 years after the war, out of the collapsed battlefields of the galactic arm, the Cybernetic Union begins to form and starts to sweep the territory.  Alarmed, our general prepares to wage war on this great menace, especially as the free-robot movement gains ground in the galactic core, complete with violence, but the Senate instead concludes a treaty and alliance with the new Cybernetic Union.

What follows is a 5 of tumult and espionage as the Cybernetic Union foments chaos in the Galactic Core, but the Senate turns a blind eye as their resources aren’t being harmed, until the General gathers sufficient allies to gain the power necessary to kick off a war against the Cybernetic Union, as well as make anti-robot reforms necessary to improve both the economic lot of the common man and to end the strife with the robots in their midst.  Seeing him as xenophobic and militaristic, the Senate justified ending his life, but things do not go as planned.

What follows then is 5 years of civil war, as the general’s son, with a loyal military behind him, wages war on senatorial forces and replaces them, finishing what is father started.  The remnants of senatorial forces retreat down another galactic arm (say, the traditional home of humanity).

The war with both the former senatorial forces and the cybernetic union have been going for the past 10 years.

That gives us a total time scale of 50 years.

Imperial History: Who gives a sh*t?

Do we fulfill our various requirements?  Let’s check.

For Brent, he can wave away all that history and say “It’s like Star Wars, right? But you’ve changed a couple of things.”  This is true. If he understands Star Wars, he understands the basic history here: It was a democratic republic (more or less) and now it’s an Empire, but now it’s at war with a hostile robot nation.  He knows enough to jump straight in.  

Things are different, of course, but we can learn that as we play.  We can have our Mon Mothma spouting things about liberty and tolerance, but if you dig deeper, we can get into your cynical, action-like corruption, where it becomes clear that she intends to restore the aristocracy to its original power (ever wonder why the daughter of a Senator was called “Princess?”  Now you know!).  This ability to explore more deeply will please Willow, and the fact that you don’t have to know it up front pleases Brent.  This isn’t to say that this information is secret: If your player reads up on all of this and knows it upfront, he’s not “spoiled,” but it’s something that can be revealed by playing, rather than known up front to play at all.  That’s important!

Now, what do we have for a Desiree?  Well, mostly we’re tackling factions at this point, but our characters could adhere to the exiled aristocracy, or the few aristocrats who sided with the Empire.  We could also belong to the aggrieved people and understand how they feel, or come to a decision as to how we feel about the villified robots.  Do we side with the Cybernetic Union?  Or do we recoil from their anti-human pogroms and their robotic gulags?  And how do we find common ground between abused and mistreated robots and abused, mistreated humans?  Plus, what happened to that barbaric, extragalactic menace?  Is it still around?

What about Bjorn?  The big thing that comes out of this are the various factions and how they wage war.  How did our general reform the military (Obviously, he gave us our dreadnoughts and typhoon fighters, but why didn’t he go with Starhawks?  Why have those become emblematic of the rebellion)?  How does the Cybernetic Union fight?  How did the extragalactic menace fight, and will it be back (Yes, duh!)?  This part of our history describes the present and the current conflict in which we can fight, and thus the modern weapons and toys he can play with.

We still have a few things left to do as well.  First, we need to define some of these characters more thoroughly, but that will come.  Second, we need to decide who these elites are, where they came from and why they were able to hold onto their power for as long as they did.  Third, we’re missing our Rommel character and our Cleopatra.  Who are they and where do they fit into all of this?  Currently, we have broad, vague outlines, and we need to pin them down, but we’ll do that as we define the organizations more completely.

The History of Psi-Wars

I wanted to begin with history because history often explains how we got to where we were.  Thus, history and cartography are usually amongst the first choices of setting-builders when they get started, as history represents where things started.  History will explain why everything is where it is, making it the foundation upon which we’ll build the setting.

That said, I almost held off on it, because history needs to explain how the setting came to be in the shape that it is, and without knowing what that shape will be, how can I write its history?  I could just write the history and then from that history derive the setting, but if I have some crazy-good idea later on as I’m working on, for example, geography or technology, should I discard it just because it doesn’t fit my history?  Of course not.  The intent here is not to set everything in stone, but to build, collect and curate inspiration, and tie it together well enough to create a cohesive setting.  So, perhaps it would be better to write my history after I’ve finished coming up with the setting?  After all, that’s how Star Wars wrote its history: George Lucas said “Space war! Evil magical samurai!  Giant planet-killing space station!  Details to follow!” and made his movie, then expanded his universe.

I propose we do both.  Having a decent grounding in the history of our setting well help guide us in our creative efforts.  It’ll create a framework that will inspire the rest, but as we work on other parts of the setting, we’ll fold their stories and histories into the greater fabric of the history we’re writing.  Thus, we’ll do this largely in two parts: Up front, to inspire our work, and at the end, a final edit of all the history we need to explain the setting we’ve come up with.

Before I begin, though, I’d like to do my usual discussion of setting creation theory.  First, we need to justify doing this at all, and get an idea of what our intent here is.  Second, we need a picture of how we’re going to proceed, and finally, we need to tools at our disposal.

Who gives a sh*t about history?

I like history.  I love digging out the lore of various settings I’m playing in, or listening to history podcasts, so of course I’d love to have a deep and detailed history. But who else would?  Are you the sort of person who falls asleep as soon as a date prior to 1971 is mentioned?  Do you have flashbacks to the time the GM offered  you his 20-page magnum opus on setting history and demanded that you read it?  History, like any other element, needs justification.

For players who want the least work possible, history does provide a vital answer to the questions of “What’s going on?  Why does any of this matter?”  A good history gives the players vital context they need to move on and understand the game they’re playing in.  Action scenarios often feature complex histories, but those histories are assumed to be understood (“We’re back in the 1960s fighting Soviet spies!”), but we cannot assume that in a sci-fi setting.  Of course, we can get a lot of mileage by saying “It’s like Star Wars, but different!” so players can assume an empire and a rebellion and move on.  Still, it’s important, that up front, the history of your setting be quickly and easily digested at a glance, so that players have enough that they can play in your setting.

Which isn’t to say that your setting can’t be deep, it’s just that the depth shouldn’t be necessary, and it should still be useful.  A well-designed history hangs together and each point flows naturally and obviously out of the things that came before.  Moreover, it can be very inspiring.  If you, as a GM, need some idea, a good history can provide you with lots of hooks or setting elements. For example, if the players need an Imperial Dreadnought, why not send them to some historical battlefield where loads of dreadnought husks still remain, waiting to be repaired… if you can snatch them from scavengers first!  If the rebels have won and the players still want to play, what opponent can you hit them with that isn’t the empire? Well, history can give you loads of ideas!

I want to stop, though, before I go much further and discuss scope. Real history is full of a dizzying number of personalities. Real history is densely packed, full of nuance and an absolute riot of chaotic events and a dizzying array of dates.  Just how deeply do we want to go down the rabbit hole here?  The obvious answer is “Don’t go overboard,” but even that advice has a flaw: Ever notice that Star Wars is always about an Empire vs a Rebellion (or a Republic)?  That’s because there’s not enough background material to support more.  Too little material can pose as many problems as too much.  Thus, I encourage you to focus on your objectives.  You should not have more material than you can quickly explain to a player, but you should have enough that you have plenty of material to draw inspiration from.  I’m going to lean towards a rather detailed setting, but that’s because I expect you, dear reader, will want to run different games than I do, so I need to support you as well as myself.

Finally, we get to the players who will ask “What about me?”  History should impact player characters directly.  Obviously, they can take the History skill, and we should definitely discuss that skill in greater detail, but characters who are part of a thriving setting should be shaped by its history.  You’re not the only one who should draw inspiration from a setting; your players should be able to as well. Say there’s a nearly dead dynasty with only a few remaining heirs to it scattered across the galaxy.  Can the players play as one of them? Of course!  What if there was a great master of Dark Communion who wielded a deadly powerful force blade thousands of years ago?  Can the players find that?  Of course!  History should shape who the player characters are and what they can get.

Weapons of the Gods, one of my favorite RPGs, did this very well by making each little bit of history a piece of lore that the PCs could learn (with a roll or a few points) and came attached with little options.  For example, you could learn about the Han dynasty, and then realize you descended from one of the princes of that era and that you got some really cool bonus from this.  Our history should be written with an eye to this: What can a player get out of this?  The most obvious answer to that question is “Relics!  They can get relics!”  And that’s one reason I included relics, but we should also endeavor to make sure each part of history has some other elements they can acquire as well: Lost technologies, secret bloodlines, ancient ruins they can explore, etc.

I want to make a final note on the difference between the work you do and the work the players see.  You can do as much work as you like, the above considerations mostly focus on what the players see.  Much of the work I’ve done in Psi-Wars will never make it into a book, and never end up before the eyes of your players unless they read this blog, and that’s okay!  Much work I do is to provide tools for myself.  For example, I worked out Cultural Values so I have an easy grab-bag of ideas I can use to quickly construct cultures, but my players only need to see the final cultures of various races, they don’t need to see the design process.

History can and should work like that.  Go ahead and have richly detailed timelines.  Go ahead and work out the economics of ancient empires.  But in the end, you need to give the players a digest, something they can relate to, not the full body of the work.  The extra work you’ve done should mean that your history hangs better and makes more sense and that you can answer questions if you need to.  The only reason I would argue against this is that if you get lost spending a year in writing “the perfect history,” you’ll never get your setting finished, and a playable setting with a crappy history is always superior to an unplayable setting with a wonderful history, ergo: “Remember your objectives.”

The Tools of History

How do we write history? The way we write every other part of our setting: We go with what we know, we steal from better stories (or history), we create a theme on which we can hang our history, and we design it in a fractal way, where possible.

Most elements are self-explanatory. I’ve already shown you some of my ideas for history, and where I’m drawing my inspiration, but what about theme? There are several works that point out useful themes we can use, but I’m going to point you towards a GURPS book: GURPS Fantasy, a very underappreciated book.  Starting on page 79, it discusses eras of history.  These eras are mythical rather than logical.  That is, Fantasy treats history the way storytellers would, as opposed to futurists.  I’m not going to look at the future of mankind and try to guess how we end up in a Star-Wars-like setting, but instead, I’m going to treat Psi-Wars as I would treat a fantasy setting, with major epochs and periods of recurring rise and fall of civilization.

This matches Star Wars itself, by the way, since the Old Republic is almost a carbon-copy of the, uh, New Republic and its history, with a few minor changes.  The history of Star Wars is a history of the Rise and Fall of the Galactic Republic in the struggle of Light against Dark, over and over again, throughout history.

I’d like to do three major eras:

• The dawn of the first (non-human) galactic empire
• The dawn of the first human empire
• The resurgence of humanity after a dark age, with a golden age suddenly interrupted by disaster and the rise of dictatorship and the fall of democracy (the modern era)

GURPS Fantasy breaks down these specific eras into sub categories:

• Dawn Ages are the mythic beginnings of an era, often housing its most famous heroes or its most interesting inventions.  This is an adventuring period before power really begins to solidify, and most of it is “lost in legend.”  Some of it is likely the interface between one era and another.
• City States might represent the first major planets to arise to regional powers.  No empire has formed at this point, but the jockeying for empire may have begun.  This is a good point for fractal design, as each city state might have some character and culture represented in the later empire, but it’s not something you need to explain, so much as let players begin to observe.
• Empires represent the consolidation of galactic power behind a single regional power who has successfully exerted dominion over the rest.
• Decadence represents the point in time where the vigor of the original power is lost and it enjoys its spoils.  If it overuses those spoils, this could lead to Exhaustion.  Either way, this is an era of oppression and failure, the death of the dream begun in the City State era.
• Catastrophe represents the final, climactic end of an era. Something dramatic kicks off the cascading collapse of power.
• Dark Ages represent the era between eras, a time of piracy and depredation, where the decadence of the old empire becomes something yearned for, because as oppressive as it was, it was better than anarchy and barbarism.
• New Beginnings completes the cycle, blurring into Dawn Ages as new heroic characters arise out of the darkness to found new city states and begin, again, the cycle.

The Scale of History

How much time should we cover?  Our history covers up to about 5000 years of history, though I would argue it only covers about 2500 of it “well.”  Star Trek seems to cover about 500 years of history. Warhammer 40k covers forty-thousand years. According to this timeline, Star Wars covers about 6000 years of history, though according to this one, it literally covers millions.    How much is enough?  How much is too much?  At what point do our numbers stop making any sense?

Ultra-Tech offers us some assistance with its Technological Progression on page 8.  What’s realistic for reaching TL 11^ and how long can our civilization reasonably stay there?  The Accelerated timeline says we can only stay there for 100 years, Fast says we can stay there for 400 yers, Medium says we can stay there for 1500 years, Slow says 5000 yeras, and Retarded says a whopping 13000 years.  So, if I’d like to stay at TL 11 for as long as possible (that is, the old eras use roughly the same tech as the modern era, which I’d like as then we can have ancient force swords), then I’m free to have a history as long as 13000 years, which is plenty.  And also, possibly too much.

Okay, another question: How long do ruins last?  If we want our heroes to go to some long dead planet and discover ruins, how long a time scale are we talking about before the ruins would realistically be a buried pile of rocks?  According the link above, ruins remain pretty recognizable up to 1000 years, and can be readily identified up to 5000 years (the Pyramids are about that old).  Thus, we could probably make the excuse that ruins could last up to 5000 years, though remaining operating strains belief somewhat, but if it worked for Indiana Jones, it can work for us.

How long does it take to build an Empire?  That depends, of course, on how large an empire is, but we can get some ballpark figures if we figure out, first, how long it takes to find decent worlds to colonize, then how long it takes to colonize them, and then how long to get those worlds to carrying capacity.

First, we have to find a suitable world.  With a hyperdrive, you can effectively get to any world in zero time, speaking on the scale of civilizations.  That is, one can reasonably visit several worlds in a single year.  How long it takes to find a world depends on how rare worlds are, but if we say that one in 100 worlds are nice enough to colonists in shirt-sleeves, and that we can survey one world a month, then it takes about 10 years to find a new world to colonize.

Once a world has been found, it probably takes effectively zero time to colonize.  That is, once you know where the world is, it likely takes longer to build the colony ship and the colony itself than to actually get there and, of course, transportation is easy enough that you could simply ferry people back and forth as many times as necessary.  Think of how long it would take America to colonize a continent that magically appeared in the middle of the Pacific: not very long at all!

Finally, we need an idea of population growth.  I think it’s safe to say that survey ships constantly look for new worlds to colonize, and that once a suitable world is found, colony efforts begin as soon as any nearby worlds begin to feel the pinch of overpopulation.  Thus, we can treat colonization as a straight up measure of population growth.

Starting with a single homeworld a carrying capacity (say, 2 billion people), how long to fill one more world, and then another?  Well, Pyramid #3-3 has a handy spreadsheet that requires a few assumptions.  Keeping their standard birth/death rate (14 per thousand births and 8 per thousand deaths), with 90+% of children surviving, each woman having a modest average of 3 children each, and each generation is 20 years long, we come to a doubling of population every 50 years or so.  That means that in the first 50 years, the homeworld can “fill up” one additional world (provided it can find it and build the necessary resources, but both of these tasks take less than 50 years).  In a century, it would have filled 4 worlds, 200 years to fill 16, and so on.  How large is “an Empire?”  Well, I’d argue that once you get more than 150 worlds in a single polity, most people stop thinking of them as individual worlds and as a larger conglomeration.  It would take our homeworld about 400 years to fill up that many worlds (Actually 256, but that’s “more than 150”), and we can round that to 500 if we account for disasters, problems and little minor wars.

The Galaxy almost certainly has more worlds than that, but it gives us a good “realistic ball park estimate” for how long it takes to build a teeming galactic nation from scratch, one that I think most players won’t blink at: 500 years.

What about the rise and fall of empires?  Well, there’s quite a few models of history, and really, you can grab whatever you want.  Ideally, you just need enough to get an idea of the rise and fall of various eras, and something that creates a believable course of history.  Personally, I dislike histories that have “And then for a thousand years, everything was great,” but it should be noted that, like all other parts of history, our history should serve a purpose.  If there’s 1000 years of “nothing interesting,” and I’m just padding my year count to get to particularly awesome artifacts, then that’s fine.  It’s better than cluttering history will tons of things the players don’t need to know.  But, on the other hand, if we want to track history in greater detail, consider how those details impact the player: do they represent events that he can trace his lineage to, or that affect his character’s background, or that provide backstory for interesting relics that he can acquire?

For this, I find that the Strauss-Howe generational model works particularly well, not because it’s necessarily accurate, but because it fits the “fractal” model nicely.  I can define a period (“The first Galactic Empire,”) then break it down into centuries with one major crisis per century (“The Trader Wars!” “The Rise of Communion!” “The Mad Emperor” “The Civil War”) and then, if I need even greater detail, I can break open the generational model to describe how each generation interacted (contributed to, responded to, resolved, overreacted in such a way to contribute to the next) the crisis of their century.  Then it’s just a matter of filling in a timeline.

The Scale of Legend

Finally what about relics themselves?  We argued that they should be able to earn a single point in 5 years, which gives us the following numbers

• 5 years (“Recent events”) gives 1 point (a perk)
• 25 years (“My father’s blade”) gives 5 points (Higher purpose or a level of Destiny)
• 50 years (“Living memory) gives 10 points (Destiny 2)
• 100 years (“Recent history”) gives 20 points (a solid advantage)
• 250 years (“The lifetime of a nation”) gives 50 points
• 500 years gives 100 points (the most expensive artifact, Severance, from my Psionc Relics post, worth half a million $).
• 5000 years gives us a 1000 point artifact, which is absurd

According to our current scheme, the sort of history we seem to be leaning towards is frankly impossible.  The suggested rate from GURPS Thaumatology is 1/5th as fast: Thus:

• 25 years (“My father’s blade”) gives us 1 point
• 125 years (“Recent history”) gives us 5 points
• 500 years gives us 20 points (a decent set of advantages)
• 2500 years gives us 100 points (and thus Severance)

The standard rates are a bit better for the scope of history we’re talking about, but it makes recent events nearly impossible.  For example, Luke’s lightsaber is a little over 50 years old by the time of the Force Awakens, meaning it only has a couple of character points by now (though Star Wars has a more compressed timeline than one might expect: You can turn into a “myth” while you’re still alive in Star Wars).  Of course, we can vary things a bit here and there and say an artifact under certain circumstances grows more quickly or slowly in power, depending on its legend and reputation, and its age gives us more of a ballpark figure.  It’s also worth noting that if we wanted something like 10,000 years of history, an artifact hailing from its ancient dawn would enjoy about 400 points, which is essentially on demand transformations into an avatar, instant regeneration of 10 energy reserves per turn, or a battery with 100 energy reserves

Or, we could try for some sort of logarithmic scale.  If we use the “yards” in the Range table as years and the bonuses as the number of points accrued, then we find we get:

• 3 years (Very recent events) for 1 point (a perk)
• 15 years (“the blade of my father) for 5 points (destiny, etc)
• 100 years (“Recent history”) for 10 points
• 5000 years (“Truly ancient history”) for 20 points

I ran the numbers for Severance, and I came to 2×10^17 years, By this point, stellar formation would have ended across the universe, and our sun would have burned down to a black dwarf, just the ashes of its former self.  So, uh, no, that’s not going to work either.

Of these numbers, I’m inclined to take the Thaumatology standard, and shoot for about 10,000 years of maximum history.