World

Places of Interest

The Glorious Empire

Outskirt Systems

• The border between Empire territory and the void

Hero’s Reach

• A semi-populous outpost in an asteroid field

• Marks the site of one of the greatest battles of The Second Empire-Saracen War

  • Surrounded on all sides by Neo-Saracen corsairs
  • A group of 30 knights and their levies halted the armarda of Neo-Saracen ships by drawing them into Hero’s Reach and ambushing before reinforcements could arrive
  • After the noble had died, the knights collectively began to formulate the plan
  • One of the bloodiest battles in the war

• A scaffolded exterior embedded in an L-shaped cut out of an asteroid

• Fields of the Fallen

  • Blue alien nature fields with plastic looking trees dispersed along a rocky floor
  • Metal poles microdose plants and the people with mists of water
  • The noble is located right in the heart of the station at a flowery field

Bawat

• Due to a loophole in the treaty between The Glorious Empire and the Neo-Saracens, this world is unclaimed by either party

Burning Sapphire

• A world with impressive deserts, rich in resources, and girt by cold polar deserts and savannah and thin mediterranean forest

  • At the far tops and bottoms are tropical wetlands

The Sovereign’s Second Great Megacity

• Think medieval Acre but FAR outstripping the walls
• A very optimistic city wall covers the old city centre, the city proper sprawls out about five times as large
• A city with such size and (top-heavy) wealth that even in the central slums there’s opportunity
• The guard headquarters is inside the archway of the walls
• Roads, especially in the town citadel, lined on either side by cracked, light brown buildings of more mortar than stone
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Tory Village

• Where the prologue takes place
• In the megacity outskirt villages
• Thatched cottages with blue veined wiring
• Green-ish savannah in lush (relatively) patch
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Devils’ Rest

• Place for the worst of the worst to go, high crimes and the like
• The only ships capable of hyperspace that enter Devils’ Rest are to pick up and drop off people when needed, as well as one standby messenger craft
• Despite its inpenetrability, only one person has ever escaped: Magnus

Velvet Chiffon

• Home of Lord Commodus
• Decadent and feels like one long massive mansion
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• The spiral centre\
  • The nexus of activity for Velvet Chiffon, a spiralling web of walkways that descend down so many floors that light cannot escape\
  • The dome above showing the toxic, yellow-green exterior of the planet\
  • (The image below but far more in keeping with above’s grand aesthetic)
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• The Emerald Horizon\
  • Rolling hills encased in an enourmous, hollowed out dark brown-black cave\
  • Bright with artifical light that puts in in perpetual pseudo-sunlight\
  • Dotted with enormous mansion estates\
  • Where Lord Commodus’ dwelling is\
  • Maglev trenches snake around the hills and onto the various stations, some suspended high in the air with two sets of sturdy chains in a V shape on either side
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• Lord Commodus’ Dwelling\
  • Built into the side of the cave, raised up high\
  • A white tower that stretches up to the roof of the cave\
  • The tower fronted by ramparts up high in full view of the Emerald Horizon\
  • Has a plaza in front, and a maglev station in front of that which is suspended\
  • On the complete opposite side of the entrance from the spiral centre
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The Glorious Empire

Government

• The Sovereign

  • Speaks in the royal we

  • Goes through a proceedure that, amongst other things, nullifies their gender and strips them of their name

    • Thereafter they go by their order in the sequence (Sovereign XII, Sovereign LII, etc)

• Knights

  • High ranking peeps who are at peak training and have been designated land by nobles, very tricky to retract (Need actual evidence of malice)

  • Provided a ship to command

  • The Royal Knights’ Society

    • The coalition that most knights enter into, kinda like a union
    • Has similarities with The Glorious Coalition before it was dissolved during the First Saracen-Empire War

  • The knight closest to the noble, essentially the second in command, and the one in charge during an emergency, is known as the Knight-At-Arms

    • In an emergency, if they die, the next knight takes over decided by I don’t really know yet

  • Fly in ships modelled after chess pieces

    • Knight horses
    • Rooks (The most common)
    • Bishops

  • Armour

    • Knights have two sets of armour: Ceremonial and Serving

    • One serves cunt, the other serves The Empire

    • Ceremonial is darker with smaller, thinner, more maneuverable plates across the abdomen

    • Serving is light gun-metal grey with chonkier plates

• Apprentice-Knights

  • Apprentice-Knights are junior knights that are in the late stages of training, and are shadowing a knight before their own knighthood and granting of land

• The Chivalric Code dictates what is considered honourable and what is acceptable conduct between knights, nobles, and the lord

• There is a hereditary constitutional monarchy, but the knights and nobles keep them in line

• Nobles are elected life-peers who represent the people

  • They are all designated various sectors depending on population, with some controlling vast swathes of space and some controlling single mega-cities
  • There’s a trade off between area and people to control
  • Every election is a fucking event since it happens so rarely
  • It’s a bit sketchy every time land is divided when populations boom, sometimes nobles attempt to keep birth rates down to keep everything in their single territory

• True to form, each knight, noble/lord, and even the king have heraldry including at minimum a coat of arms for their dynasty

• The Son of the Sovereign

  • Unknown figure from within The Glorious Empire liasoning with Neo-Saracen spies, placing them in potentially vulnerable areas

  • SPOILER ALERT: It’s Lord Commodus

    • Commodus wants to reignite a war between the Neo-Saracens and The Glorious Empire, as he believes that both cannot coexist.
    • He believes that the previous sovereign, and his former friend, performed the ultimate betrayal by signing a peace treaty and ceding land to the Neo-Saracens

Land

• Land within a noble’s or knight’s territory is administered by that person
• Agreements about this land are worth their weight in gold pennies and there are grave punishments for breaking these agreements
• Land that doesn’t belong to any noble or knight is “Crown land,” owned directly by the Sovereign

Ships

• Every ship has a bunker in the centre for citizens to go in emergencies, where ship systems can be controlled if the bridge can’t be contacted

  • Ships are controlled by a sometimes rotating series of knights who, when in charge, are known as the “Knight-At-Arms”

    • All have been trained in control + maintenance

  • Messenger shuttles are used to carry messages faster and more securely than a signal can

    • Every message is sent with and without a ship, but since time is of the essence, and sometimes the need for secrecy is paramount, a messenger shuttle is sent
    • Cryptography has gotten so good that any messages that might get sent wirelessly can be immediately cracked by their computers. Thus, the only way to send messages safely is physically

• Ships use solar sails to pick up speed quickly

  • High energy beams of radiation hitting the sails let them jump (more) quickly to other systems

• Turrets

  • Turrets are the main ship used by knights
  • Often they have large populations within them, much like a castle with a castle town
  • The population there can live and work and trade, but have also agreed to be levied when any combat breaks out
  • There will often be artificial farmlands where food is grown
  • When engaged in a ramming attack, the stone exterior generally breaks away revealing the pointed ironsteel interior

History

Early colonists

• First colonists came from “home” after mass-drives were mass-produced and was basically a free-for-all for land in the systems
• Knights came from the need to personally protect the first colonists who would be retroactively termed the first nobles
• Knights were promised land in exchange for administration and protection
• The roots of the empire comes from a confederation formed to curb violence and backstabbing between knights and nobles of all stripes

First Saracen-Empire war

• Tested the confederation

• Was caused by disputes between confederate colonists and Neo-Saracens who themselves had started colonising land

  • Independent colonists were having skirmishes with the Neo-Saracens, but things only came to a head when the first confederate members started getting in conflicts with them
  • The motion to begin the war (With the famous Assault on Glitter Haven) passed with a slim majority

Second Saracen-Empire war

• The Empire proper was formed during the war

• Main story stuff takes place decades after the war

• It was caused by unresolved issues after the end of the first war

  • Dispute over who should get war land after the war
  • Whether the border should return to its pre-war state and/or what war conquests should be recognised

• Ended with a treaty that was incredibly complicated and aimed to encompass every edge case and make everyone as satisfied as possible

  • Drafted and written by the studious 62nd Sovereign and a team of scholars, who wanted to ensure such a war never happened again
  • A hodge-podge mess of divided systems, with the occasional enclaves and exclaves for good measure

Currency

• Crowns
• One crown is worth a fair amount, but to subdivide it you literally cut it with a ironsteel coin file (Basically a smaller, thinner dagger)
• 1/8 Crown is the cost of one mug of beer, base all other costs relative to that

People

Sovereigns

• 61st Sovereign

  • Staunchly conservative, old strong-man style leadership

    • Think like an Otto Von Bismarck or George V

  • Began the Second Saracen-Empire War, leading their flagship personally into battle

  • Disappeared during a military charge at The Battle of Blood Nebula

• 62nd Sovereign

  • Was close friends with Lord Commodus prior to their ascension
  • Took over partway through the Second Saracen-Empire War
  • Initially stayed out of the war proceedings, before being confronted with the full horrors of the war
  • Made a push for peace and eventually convinced enough people to support
  • Assassinated by Magnus (On orders of Lord Commodus)

• 63rd Sovereign

  • A stooge hastily propped up to not get in the way of a future war
  • Beleagured George Washington from Hamilton type
  • Trying to do good, despite being chosen for the role to do nothing

Vexillology

• In lieu of an empire-wide flag, each nobility has its own seal, usually of simple shapes and colur

Lord Commodus

• Simple blue cross

Council of City 2

• Green downward triangle with line tracing inside border

Lady Hope

• A sillhouetted Heron atop a hazy red sun

Language

• The Empire speak a shared “Colonial”

Neo-Saracens

• An enigma to people in TGE. If there wasn’t documentation of them and a big fuck off border then you’d be forgiven for thinking they don’t exist

  • Some think they may even be aliens

• Has an extensive spy network within the more populous areas of The Glorious Empire

• They value …?

Weapons and armour

• Ranged firearms and explosives in general haven’t worked since “The Dampening” centuries ago

  • Scientists have detected a great magnetic field since the start of The Dampening, but not where it’s eminating from
  • Laser weaponry was experimented with but never able to be produced in any efficient way that didn’t immediately rip apart any portable power source used

• Ironsteel is a crazy durable and tough armour that can only be cut into by weaponry made of itself

  • It’s also rare and as such only used for knights, nobles, and the ships/weapons used by them

The Universe

• The universe, at least the exploarable universe of about 12 systems, has a finite end before the void
• In actuality there are stars and galaxies beyond this stopping point, but even the best mass drives couldn’t make it out there in a lifetime