When I originally started this series of blog posts it was to go through the the source material and put my own spin on it. Then I heard about Cepheus Engine and decided to switch to it because it was an OGL system. Which is not to imply anything negative about FFE it just meant I didn't have to worry I would muck up and accidentally post something I shouldn't. Seeing as I wasn't going to be using the 3I but still wanted to be thematically compatible so anything I did create would be as widely useful as possible. Am I going to jump into the indie publishing market with this? Probably not as I know my limitations and to actually produce something requires more concentrated effort than I am capable of to date but CE also means if I get that far I actually can do it. That is damn awesome and I am grateful to Samardan and FFE for that possibility. I am also coming to appreciate how much work it is to come up with a setting. I have stated my general goal and given a very general universe wide background. Having reviewed the rules in a general sense I am trying to figure out what to do next. It is a tricky thing in that it would be really easy to get sucked into writing the whole of the history for my base empire no one will read. Instead I need to develope enough of the history and astrography (geography of space??) so I know how to modify character generation if at all.
So lets lay out the default empire for the setting. First thing is to name it seeing as I didn't like my first try. I am going to call it the Tiber-Beltaine Referendum which gives me the names of the two most important worlds of the winning side of the unification war. It is called a Referendum because worlds must hold one to join agreeing to the terms of the union. Tiber needs to be an industrial world with a feudal technocracy government and as close to Earth normal stats as possible and will be the capital of the empire. Beltaine needs to be an ideal agricultural world within two parsecs of of Tiber. These two worlds formed the original referendum setting in place the scope of interstellar rule. Fearing Tiber would just take them over Beltaine (famed for being pragmatic) came up with the idea of a insterstellar union leaving members with almost complete autonomy on their world. No planetary government can pass or enforce any laws concerning anything outside of 10 diameters. So no trade rules or tariffs however it also means things generally found abhorrent like slavery are not banned out right. In exchange for this local autonomy a world cedes the ability to make any exo-system agreements and must provide men; arms and or material support to the Referendum on demand. It also meant that criminals could get away be just leaving a system. The first change to the Referendum was the establishment of the personal noble. For every 200 citizens of the TBR there is a Knight that they may petition to seek redress to a wrong against them. Every 200 Knights have a Baron they can elevate a situation to, Every 50 Barons have a Count they swear fealty to every 25 Counts are under a Marquis. All the Marquis in a subsector owe fealty to a Duke who is elected for life by the Knights of the subsector. All the Dukes a direct vassals of the Emperor or King depending on which family is currently ruling. Counts and higher can issue imperial/royal demands to apply to all member worlds. In most cases these are issued for criminals such as murderers and the like. However they can also be used to ban the import or export of goods from a certain world. These are the landed nobles and PCs who are direct vassals of the throne. PC nobles don't have people who are sworn to them and they are responsible for instead they operate as free lance observers for the TBR on the whole. They are also who make up the juries in trials for landed nobles and do have the right to vote on imposing or repealing decrees if they are physically present during a moot or meeting of nobles. This gives some meaning to having a widespread noble social status and to provide the GM with hooks to involve PCs in a situation as they will be expected to look into a situation if asked.
Meanwhile the Kingdom of Kent was a charismatic oligarchy and spread more slowly than the TBR because they forced member worlds to assimilate to their culture and laws. It lead to a more unified society and technology base. They held off the more numerous TBR due to a more integrated military and they didn't have the myriad self interests the looser TBR government did. Numbers were against them and they definitely lost the PR war on the unaligned worlds. As the unification war raged it became apparent to the world who did not belong to either polity that they would have to join one way or another. The choice between the two sides came down to which one would leave the native society most intact which was pretty obviously the TBR not the KoK. In the antebellum it became apparent that many of the advantages of the KoK could and should be adopted by the TBR. The noble system above was one example. The other significant ones were a referendum armed forces as opposed to the TBR method of the individual worlds providing homegrown forces and then trying to integrate them.
This part of history took place in an area of about 3 subsectors with the TBR on the left, KoK on the right and the center one being where J1 main linked all the world and lead out into the rest of the sector. Guesstimated sizes would be TBR having around 22 members at the start vs KoK with around 15 and a bunch of independents. My idea for these choices is to be big enough a threat to the other to provoke a war with out supporting large enough force to wipe out worlds. So Tiber and Kent achieve interstellar tech around the same time and start to expand. Tiber and Beltaine form the Referendum and use the power of being able to significant amounts of food and goods to entice other worlds to join but the Referendum was pretty weak as a central government. KoK on the other hand expanded slower because they reformed the worlds that either joined on their own or where forced into the KoK. This goes on for around 200 years before they become aware of each other. By this point they have computers capable of jump 3 (dedicated systems as mentioned in CE general computer only capable of jump 2). With that in mind when I get around to mapping the subsectors I will put in J2 rifts on the far edges of both polities to provide a reason they went after each other rather than expand in another direction. You get 25 years of client state recruitment in the Tangles which is what I am calling the central subsector because I envision the jump routes looking tree like. THe whole situation goes up in flames as a war. KoK does good at the start because they have a larger and better integrated military this scares numerous formerly independent worlds to join the TBR. Numbers start to change the fortunes of war Beltaine force the TBR to offer to negotiate. During the negotiation a cut off squadron of KoK ships use nuclear weapons against an unaligned world that was allowing the use of it's spaceyards. The outcome of this is within a year the KoK surrenders in the face of the threat of retaliation in kind and almost all other worlds in the local area joining the TBR. The rogue squadron flees when it realizes they will be executed. Most pirates in the TBR still claim ties to this group. So the whole war takes 10 years or less and results in the weak and disorganized power winning and the strong centralized government still being in charge (mostly) of it's core worlds.
I will stop here as this has turned into a giant wall of text.
Takeaways:
1. Reason for noble titles and why PC nobles aren't in charge of stuff.
2. Reason for the randomness of world governments and technology
3. Reason for Army; Navy and Marines in feudal disorganized state.
4. Some more basic astrography
5. Basis for KoK to still be a separate identity.
6. Origin for pirates, Yarrgh!
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