Sovereigns of the Stars Supreme, revisited

[Siege]

Earth was probably already a hazy memory by the time the primordial empire came along, and the Psychic Wars completely fucked over the collective memories of mankind to the point where, really, nobody even as a freaking clue how old the species actually is or which planet is Earth or how long we've been out here. 'Cause, well, that's what system-spanning mindstorms and cognitive dictatorships do.

So really, probably this empire was already something like the Fourth Bountiful Human Empire in 5013 AD, but by the time the present rolls along nobody really knows for sure how long humanity's been out here. You could have entire teams of Space Indiana Joneses trying to make a living discovering the ancient ruins of pre-Imperial times or something.

[Lelouch vi Britannia]

Personally, I'm not too keen on the idea of the vast majority of humanity's psychic potential being tied up with only two people and their immediate descendants. I actually liked how SDNW4 handled it, in that there is a clear genetic component to psychic potential that varies between populations and can be engineered if you know what to look for and what to manipulate.

The fact that there were few to no psychics in the Sovereignty prior to the Apexai hybridization program can thus easily be explained by the founder effect; long story short, the founder populations of the original colonies got shafted in terms of genetics, with a lower-than-usual frequency of psychic potential genes. Even with migration from other states increasing the Sovereignty's overall genetic diversity, the odds of a psyker spontaneously arising via chance were extremely low, and the few that did were puny compared to the espers coming out of the Imperium and the Holy Empire. Apexai hybridization would thus serve two purposes, to introduce the potential and to enhance already-existing potential (however minimal it may be).

I also consider any talk of space USMCs armed with space 5.56mm assault rifles to be slightly disparaging of the Holy Empire, seeing as the SOS Imperial Marine Corps as it was originally conceived really was a space USMC, right down to the rank structure and insignia.

[Shroom Man 777]

Don't worry, a whole lot of guys festooned their pages with US military rank insignias.

I think the prevalence of Space Americas with Space USMCs with Space M16s should be in part due to some conservative reactionary militarist/fundamentalist reaction to the psychic cataclysm. So you end up with all sorts of fundie gung-ho regressive paleoconservative nation-states out there.



I think the Emperor and Empress shouldn't siphon off humanity's psychic potential.

I think the USS could have some small psion population before the Apexai Hybrids.

But the problem with pure human psions is how psionics isn't just pure manifestation of mentallics, but it also includes emotion, subconscious, and there's a feedback thing where the psion can also be affected by the emotions and thoughts and stuff of others - think of how 40k's Warp works, it's a psychic realm governed by the emotions and feelings of countless interlinked minds.

We think of psychics as simply "ooh read minds, lift objects", but when you think about it, if a mind is sensitive to the thoughts and feelings of others, of many many others, then this can bring about all sorts of complications. There's a great potential of instability when the psion grows stronger and thus more sensitive and thus more attuned and susceptible to the noospheric sea of human conscious, subconscious and infraconscious that he also gains greater power over (it works both ways in some kind of feedback mechanism).

This is probably why some normal human psion orders use monastic methodologies to keep the psion's mind and feelings and emotions calm and prevent them from going insane or getting darksided or falling into the subconscious Id or whatever.


Whereas, as Vic said, I think the Apexai Hybrids could negate this, and could make USS psions and CEID psions more stable and "objective", because the Apexai component of their psionic nature makes them more detached from the human noosphere of swirling emotions and feelings and subconscious, because they operate on a more inhuman, cold and dispassionate frequency or level or spectrum of psionics.

[Lelouch vi Britannia]

Don't worry, a whole lot of guys festooned their pages with US military rank insignias.

I think the prevalence of Space Americas with Space USMCs with Space M16s should be in part due to some conservative reactionary militarist/fundamentalist reaction to the psychic cataclysm. So you end up with all sorts of fundie gung-ho regressive paleoconservative nation-states out there.

By that token, we may very well have space equivalents for every other historic and contemporary nation-state. Accordingly, I wonder what the pseudo-Holy Empire's reaction would be when it encounters Space Japan, or what the pseudo-Imperium's reaction would be when it encounters Space Greece and Space Turkey...

[Shroom Man 777]

While these nations can be called "Space America" or "Space Byzantium" in the vaguest sense in these conversations, I don't really mean them to be all that in-keeping of modern nations. The pseudo-Haruhiists in this verse would have as much in common with modern Japan as, say, the world of the Wachowski's Speed Racer movie. The pseudo-Byzantines, in this case, would have nothing in common with ancient Byzantium, and would be a soul-crushingly authoritarian state ruled by a super-psychic patriarch. They're nations formed after psychic cataclysms, led by psionic demigods, with societies permeated by ritual psionic-memetic veneration to venerate their leaders via super-materialistic prosperity worship and socially engineered haterade. How much like Japan or Byzantium could they possibly be?

We're taking basic concepts and kicking them up a notch. The original idea of "space this" and "space that" will be bounced around so many times and modified and added to that the result will be way different, and way more, than the original proposition.

And let's not forget that the Sovereignty was the original Space America, back in 2003 or so. :v

[Fingolfin]

All this bit of the Emperor growing from a vat or whatever is rather far from how I conceived the Byzantine Imperium...

[Shroom Man 777]

Because it's neither exactly the Byzantine Imperium nor the Holy Empire of Haruhii. And the Byzantine Imperium was conceived as, well, the IoM from 40k but with Greek names.

We're taking some of the basic ideas of these things, like patriarchial demigod supreme leader of xenophobic intolerant fanatic militarist fascist nation under a stratified regime of superhuman enforcers, and taking them to other directions, which might not necessarily have say... Greeks or Warhammer 40K or bannerspikeskulls. We're trying to make them independent of their origins, and workable and interactive and coherent with the setting of SOTSS, and dynamic and unique to these new surrounds.

[Fingolfin]

Because it's neither exactly the Byzantine Imperium nor the Holy Empire of Haruhii. And the Byzantine Imperium was conceived as, well, the IoM from 40k but with Greek names.

We're taking some of the basic ideas of these things, like patriarchial demigod supreme leader of xenophobic intolerant fanatic militarist fascist nation under a stratified regime of superhuman enforcers, and taking them to other directions, which might not necessarily have say... Greeks or Warhammer 40K or bannerspikeskulls. We're trying to make them independent of their origins, and workable and interactive and coherent with the setting of SOTSS, and dynamic and unique to these new surrounds.

I actually on some level thought the Emperor was a product of a centuries long genetic program, like the Bene Gesserit's Kwisatz Hadarach in Dune.

This idea might work, well, without the ... vat part.

[Lelouch vi Britannia]

The bannerspikeskulls, Greco-Roman motifs, and other stuff cribbed from Warhammer 40K can still be useful as a basis for establishing the character of the new Imperium. Just as the Sovereignty evolved from being a relatively straightforward Space America to a truly cosmopolitan society that defies easy categorization, so can the Imperium evolve from its origins as a Warhammer 40K pastiche with a Greek veneer.

On that note, the basic idea of the Emperor's origin as initially outlined by Shroom, Siege, and Invictus can work without needing the involvement of a vat. Genetic engineering can work perfectly as an integral part of the backstory; if there is a genetic component to psychic potential, the Institute could have easily used all of its genetic knowledge to engineer the Emperor and the Empress, to bring about the Instrumentality it so wanted, to stave off the catastrophe that its seers predicted. Of course, we all know what happened afterwards.

[Siege]

Here's an idea: the datadjinni. They are tiny wisps of digital thought, originating within an X-ray burster binary. From a distance an eagle-eyed observer could see within the stellar corona the ephemeral shapes of their data-palaces, acutely complex and ever-changing fata morgana built of pure electromagnetic force. The datadjinni are masters of the EM spectrum, and have manipulated their home star into acting like a titanic hyperspace array, beaming copies of themselves at distant other stars as a means of colonization. More recently they have taken up residence within the Datasphere, the ubiquitous network of computerized information that permeates the Sovereignty. The datadjinni are as close to pure information as it's possible to get, and so feel perfectly at home within the endlessly receding lclusters and constellations of data. By their very nature they are fickle, ever-changing and thus unpredictable: only the very oldest and mightiest of the djinni have anything approaching a long-term memory. The djinni flock to interesting events within the Datasphere and can commonly be found swarming around CompInts like fireflies around a campfire; for organic creatures they are difficult to interact with, having little to no concept and even less understanding of the physical world. Nonetheless as intuitive masters of the digital they can be very powerful, and woe whoever spurns them, because in an age where your very identity is in large part digital, it is very unwise to cross the djinni.

[Shroom Man 777]

I like that.

Conversely one of the dominant Myrranii noble houses I thought of, the House of Mirrors, I imagined would stay in these crystal palaces in the coronas of suns and bask in the solitude and lose themselves in the greatness and vastness of these stellar bodies in some kind of solitary meditative trance sun worship, and like their technological shtick (since I'm thinking that each Myrranii House should have a different specialization, because out of aristocratic vanity they'd hate to be seen copycat-ing other houses) would be conducting solar symphonies via huge ass scalar EM arrays manipulating solar flares and sunspots and solar wind currents, or occasionally using these to repulse anyone attempting to besiege their star palaces.

[Siege]

You've been watching Sunshine again?

It would be interesting to combine these two. Let's say, the Lady of the House of Mirrors sits in absolute solitude in her palace, all surrounded by coronal mass emissions and so forth, and the only thing visiting her is one particularly ancient djinn that's taken up residence inside the star. It'd be like Solaris (the book, not the place): strange phantasmal visitings that the Lady isn't sure aren't at least partially drawn from her own imagination, bizarre visions and so on as the djinn is figuring out a way to interact with this peculiar creature that's taken up residence in his star. Cue insights into the Myrran psyche, and quite possibly a mending of sorts as the Lady slowly comes to terms with her species' (and her own) flawed mentality!

[speaker-to-trolls]

I think the prevalence of Space Americas with Space USMCs with Space M16s should be in part due to some conservative reactionary militarist/fundamentalist reaction to the psychic cataclysm. So you end up with all sorts of fundie gung-ho regressive paleoconservative nation-states out there.

If I can go back to this to through in an idea; could there be a prevalence of the kind of regressive politics you see in a lot of space opera because of something more unusual than just reactionary politics? Like, perhaps the psychic wars had a profound effect on the collective subconscious of a lot of planets that caused them to sort of retreat into old ideas, histories and myths about how a society should work? Of course they wouldn't end up actually being anything like modern or past civilisations, because their ideas about what the USA or China or wherever were like would probably be nothing like the reality. I'm actually borrowing from Ford's thoughts in this thread, where he talks about the possibility of the Transingularity Earth nations being weird distorted versions of the ideologies they used to adhere to.

[Shroom Man 777]

Divisions between various space nationalities, fears, nationalisms, xenophobias, psychic horrers and the like could very well likely influence their sociocultures to take up crazy ass manifestations. If a society has a chip up its shoulder, it's totally gonna try and do things "differently" from its other surrounding neighbors and ending up pretty... unique. Yeah, you'd have all sorts of weird ass countries doing things in weird ass ways.

You've been watching Sunshine again?

I wish. God I need to see that movie again.

But yeah, the djinn could be a presence that's not just in the Datasphere, or not even mostly in the Datasphere, but in all sorts of other unexpected places making for all sorts of unique cultural interactions.

I was thinking of these space arabians, Trucial Star guys, with a Space Emir (Arnold Strong!) and stuff, possibly one of the weirdo regressive nations Speaker speculates on. The Trucial Star guys could be all neutral and prone to business and trade. And their culture could be some kind of combination of pre-Islamic... things that stems from the fact that their original homeworlds were mercurial places very near the suns, and their wise men had radio arrays listening onto the emissions of the djinn living in their sun, and maybe every century there'd be this huge ass solar flare and some djinn might even get expelled from the sun in a coronal mass ejection and they'd end up getting trapped in the planetary ionosphere where they'd turn into screaming writhing roaring auroras before they expire. Until the Trucials get the technology needed to bottle these stranded djinn and save them from dissipation. The djinn will get preserved in these Lamps, but they are dormant and in stasis, though periodically they can be activated for short periods of time before being placed in stasis again to conserve their lives. Maybe this can thus be some huge ass cultural thing for the Trucials, who wear air conditioned burkhas to cope with the miserable heat of their desert worlds. The djinns might be thankful for being saved from dissipation in the ionosphere and whisper secrets and sciences to their saviors when they are periodically "let out" from the Lamps, for three wishes. Or some djinns might misinterpret and think they are captured and slaved, and so if you open their Lamps they go all Jafar on folks ass and turn desert cities into glass craters before they end up extinguishing.

Maybe there's a ritual celebration when the Trucials take a whole bunch of their saved djinn and put their Lamps in a rocket, or load all the Lamps into a huge ass antenna, and shoot them back into the sun in either a space capsule or a huge beam of rainbow light from the planetary surface reaching into the sun!

[Invictus]

Some notes on the members of the Samtic Nexus:

The Samtics themselves have already been well described. They have progressed far from the ungainly colonies of mollusk-like creatures that they were in their natural state, and have diversified throughout their long history as a civilization to an unimaginable profusion of clade-combinations. The most "modern" Samtic forms have multiple sapient and semi-specialized organisms co-existing in a hardtech shell, with all living arrangements negotiated out and facilitated with the Samtics' own strong instincts for cooperation and compromise. It functions somewhat like a combination of family (which Samtics do not have, being externally fertilizing organisms with no real sense of sexual attraction, even), corporation and mass marriage. Although backed by law and contract, the political arrangements of each Samtic colony tend to be its own business, and it is seen as a sign of maturity for such arrangements to function smoothly - not that Samtics as a matter of culture intrude into the shells of others. while colony members in the past would have been responsible for various aspects of the Samtic's survival (food gathering, propulsion, defence, shell repair, etc.), modern Samtic shells perform all such functions automatically with built-in technology.

Therefore Samtic organisms today concentrate more on carrying out social and vocational roles for mutual benefit while balancing it with the right to self-fulfillment. A Samtic diplomat, for example, may choose to be incorporated from a number of specialists on different topics who feed their input to a "face" organism who specializes in synthesizing such opinion and communication with outsiders, or it might prefer to have a number of equally knowledgeable wonks come to a consensus before presenting its conclusions. Some organism roles, such as security, are of course vital for both forms of organization. Any number of schools of thought exist on the question of how to optimize Samtic colonies and societies. And this doesn't even account for those Samtics who exist far away from these norms: large populations of older Samtics with more "unitary" organism designs still exist; some "solo" Samtic organisms thrive as symbiotes attached to other species; and there are "libertarian" collectives of hundreds of organisms co-existing on highly flexible terms, for which no physical shell may even exist.

Nevertheless, all Samtics share important characteristics: a desire to find cooperation and use with the Other that borders on xenophilia; little resistance against self-modification and transsamtic developments due to their origins as a artificial species, and a love for working out systems of political organization that comes as second nature to them. Some USS observers have commented that all Samtic political, social and economic systems are far more complicated than they need to be, and that compared to humans all Samtics seem to generate bureaucracy for the mere fun of it. It is certainly telling that while the USS has chosen to give its citizens purpose in a post-scarcity leisure society by encouraging them all to go into the entertainment industry, Samtic polities tend to create gigantic and unnecessary civil services as a similar kind of make-work scheme.

Samtic polities in the Nexus tend to be divided by political philosophy and biological "upgrade" generations.


The Daur are aquatic dirigible creatures that resemble a cross between whales and sunfish, and control their buoyancy and movement with a system of water bladders and jets. They bear the honor and misfortune of being the Samtics' first real uplift project and client race. The Daur evolved on a waterworld much larger than Earth, hemmed in by a boundary of supercritical steam where the world's Venus-like atmosphere met its ocean above and miles of pressure-ice below, with no chance of developing sapience let alone technology. The Samtics came and uplifted them and adapted them to using robotic tools and ubiquitous wireless communications, which allowed them to function meaningfully as a modern civilization but also left them utterly dependent on their benefactors. Discontent built up until it came to a head during one the times in Samtic history where they questioned their own purpose, and the whole Daur race, save for a few intrepid souls who have extensively upgraded themselves into intelligences controlling vehicles and spacecraft, voted in a referendum to undo the uplift process and return to non-sapience. It was not until the aforementioned cyber-Daur sought to create a power base in the embryonic Samtic Nexus that they persuaded their cousins to embrace their destiny again, that Daur civilization took its present form.

The typical Daur is in a word, preppy, enjoying the fruits of its membership of the Samtic Nexus with little impetus to contribute labor to it. Daur do produce significant amounts of ideas, art and culture for their small population, but their political influence in the Nexus is limited. One exception is the cyber-Daur, who have diverged significantly from their progenitors and thrived in the dense transport infrastructure of the Nexus. They tend to be more pragmatic and are in three words, space whale truckers. Another exception are various Daur discontents who rebel against the indulgent and self-absorbed lifestyle of the typical Daur and go around star systems raising hell. They are in two words, skate-punks.


The Kheler (Khelerene) are an avian species who have developed spaceflight and got a decent interstellar civilization going before they met the Samtics. Socially they were strictly monogamous and highly atomized, divided into a number of independent kiths which have technologically and culturally diverged to a staggering degree as they explored space. Some kiths carried on their monogamous habits to beyond death - minds of tribal elders were uploaded into crude and massive computers to form a composite mind stretching back countless generations, partly as a devotional exercise, partly to preserve their wisdom. The Kheler saw little reason to enter into closer relations with the technologically more advanced Samtics, at least until outlying kiths were caught in the path of Myrrani expansion. The Myrrans were also vastly more technologically advanced, so the Kheler were forced to seek succor from the more reasonable party.

Some kiths relocated to deep within Nexus territory and lived on in confined peace, but the more storied kiths are the ones who became the Talonworlders - the ones who drew a line in the sand by setting their monolithic kith-minds down on key worlds, and vowing that the Myrrans will never take them. Assisted by Samtic technology and logistics, these kiths reinvented themselves into fully-militarized fleets and armies who specialized in going on long-range, destructive counterattacks into the notoriously porous Myrrani territory. They managed to fight the Myrrans to a standstill and thus defined one whole flank of the Samtic Nexus in a conflict that still continues today.

This state of affairs transformed the Kheler into the most warlike member of the Nexus and the Talonworlder kiths into its de facto standing military, with huge fleets of fast, disciplined ships ready to respond to any threat. It goes without saying that their ultra-mobile, deep-penetration raiding tactics were less effective when employed on the Bragulan front.


The Hadepodes (Hadepod) are living veins of hydrocarbons with "skeletons" of silicone supermolecules and "blood" of pressurized sulfuric acid. They evolved in the deep parts of the crusts of rocky worlds, squeezing through natural (and later, self-made) cracks in the rocks to form vast distributed webs of life. They merged and warred with and consumed each other, forging metals by burrowing into volcano vents and building palaces in hollow geodes. By the time of first contact, the Hadepodes already possessed advanced nanotechnology and hardtech augmemtics such as crystalline processing nodes which they incorporated into their own bodies, and had even tentatively explored the dead cold surface of their world. Being curious, industrious creatures of constant circulation that already took well to self-modification, they are one of the happier cases of uplift and integration into the Samtic Nexus. However, their fairly extensive bulk and relatively extreme living conditions have limited their population spread, and they can only survive earthlike conditions in giant brass caterpillar-like environmental suits. That is not to say that the Hadepodes haven't undergone as much technological cladistic divergence as the Samtics themselves.

The Hadepodes are largely preoccupied within and without the Nexus as engineers and terraformers. A single Hadepod can become an entire planetary infrastructural network by burrowing into the crust, using nanotech to construct and lay out pipes, cables and tunnels as it grows and expands, forming connections and outlets on the surface as required, and use its own neural network to monitor and regular the system which is essentially a part of its body. Due to the fluidity of their identities, Hadepodes don't really have polities to call their own.


The "Crystaceans" (actual name undecided) are something between crystalline trees and long-legged crabs, swarming on rocky worlds near the sun and feeding on solar and electromagnetic energies. They multiply when a solar flare happens, using the magnetic perturbations to propel themselves into the upper atmosphere and then space, where they unfurl great magnetic sails to catch the energies and home in on other star systems, going into stasis as they travel in seed form. Thus they spread instinctively across the galaxy over millions of years, with some strains developing ways to use radio waves for communication, singing their slow songs into the void. Perhaps one strain out of those absorbed radio waves from alien sources, because they became sapient and started traveling across systems with purpose, to uplift and harmonize their mindless kin with the cosmic harmony that they now perceived. Out of these efforts they developed rudimentary psychic abilities and perhaps even the power to directly manipulate hyperspace with their crystalline structures, and even as their kind grew old and sessile they never truly died, instead assuming forms which could be used as artificial tools and buildings flowing with residual impulses, eventually weaved together to form atmosphere-piercing radio arrays and glittering crystalline Dyson trees.

This was good, until the "Crystacean" uplifters ran into a strain that was already sapient, but not according to any of their own designs and by means completely anathemic to them! The Samtics were on the scene, having perceived the same potential in the less developed strains. They moved to prevent the uplifters from exterminating their proteges, and the two species spiraled into war. Old and wise but woefully specialized in terms of technology, it was not an equal conflict. The uplifters were forced in inflict more and more radical transformations onto themselves, developing dread weapons that gave even the Samtics pause: gigantic scalar relay swarms that could shatter worlds; space yggdrasil motherships that fed on entropy itself; great vampire engines that could psychically drain life from interplanetary distances. This war machine grew so fearsome that the uplifters lost control of it, and ultimately they were forced into an alliance with the Samtics to drive it into Wild Space where it even now hunts and breeds among the Karlacks.

The strain of "Crystaceans" survived the conflict and is a full member of the Nexus today, living an estranged existence from the greater body of "Crystaceans" whose relations with the Nexus as a whole is chilly at best.

[Ford Prefect]

I kind of wish i had something more substantial to add, but it's exams time and my brain is fried. Still, that's some really fascinating and evocative stuff.

[Shroom Man 777]

Looking at this really badass image made me muse of a race of biomechanical race reminiscent of the Strogg and the Borg and the Combine from Half-Life, their MO is basically to assimilate other races through a horrific multi-generational surgerization process.

When they conquer a race, the populace they subjugate undergo three generations of assimilation. The first generation, the existing population at the time of conquest, are basically hauled en masse to factories where grotesque snake-like mechanical dendrites fuse themselves to the subjects' spinal column and carve out a chunk of the lower brain and embed themselves there as well. You get a forcefully cyberized "drone" populace, simply ala Strogg and Borg and Combine.

But then! These cyberized assimilants aren't just mindless drones, their identities are subjugated courtesy of the network interlinking their dendrite-implants, but they still think and feel, albeit in a completely reprogrammed fashion (that can be switched into "mindless drone" mode). That's not all though. They're also capable of reproducing. The dendrites that have fused into their tissues expand and nano-infest the reproductive organs, so the next generation that these assimilants sire will already be "cyberized" in the womb, during the fetal stage.

So the next generation will be more "perfected" assimilants, and the generation after them will be totally perfect ones who will by then incorporate the master race's (for a lack of a better name) own genetic material and will be indistinguishable from them.

I think these biomechanoids, in their bid for perfection, kind of took the route of "conquering other races, and then surgically incorporating ourselves into our subjects, and incorporating their material into us." Because while they conquer and surgerize and cyberize poor hapless races, they're also downloading and storing and utilizing all the useful purposes of the guys they've victimized.

In a way, it's the opposite and yet equally (or even more) horrific version of Bragulan totalitarianism. Maybe it veers closer to Karlack-like assimilation.

But the biomechanoids are not faceless forces of nature like the Karlacks, they're still ruled by a bunch of maniacs, I'd imagine. Or... beings simply with a great vision that happens to be utterly horrific to the rest of the galaxy. Maybe they'd be best friends with the Technotheocrats. And they're waging a path of oppression and terror through a swath of space, just like the Brags.

Speaking of which... I'd imagine that these biomechanoids would be a medium-sized expansionist power in the "south" part of the galaxy, and they'd encroach on a whole bunch of systems and sectors that aren't as highly developed as the bigger nations, until they run into the peripheral "southern hinterlands" of...

The Bragulan Star Empire.

With the Brags focusing their most high-tech worldwrecking planetoids and warfleets and interplanetary kill arrays and fortress worlds at their DMZ near Wild Space, facing the USS, their "southern" portions are probably composed of very very huge "rural" space-oblasts, like the Russian Far East, with relatively underdeveloped star systems and sectors (i.e. the worlds aren't all horrible industrial deathworlds or uber-militarized fortresses) and a more subdued border defense force (subdued in Bragulan standards being something that ISN'T an overkill military behemoth that can kill puny lesser-to-medium space nations several times over).

The biomechanoids perhaps see this as a weakness and try to exploit it, at first maybe using sneaky subversive means like nano-infestations to brain-control local Brag officials, to make things look like some coup or secession or mutiny rather than an extraterrestrial invasion to soften things up before an actual biomechanoids invasion. Initially they gain ground into the Bragulan periphery and subjugate the outer provinces just as they did their previous conquests of lesser races elsewhere, and they push on and on deeper into Bragspace, and deeper.

And deeper.

And deeper...

Turns out they might have horribly miscalculated the extent of Bragspace, and when the Bragstavka learned of their intrusion, decided to LET the biomechanoids push deeper into the Bragulan backwater in order to over-extend themselves. The Brags might even do a maskirovka, just deploying a calculated amount of defenders to meet the invaders to give them a hard enough time so that the biomechanoids will be forced to commit more forces into the region they've held or invaded, while not giving too much Bragresistance to force the biomechanoids to retreat and re-rally their forces.

While this happens, the Brags might actually be maneuvering their huger ass-kicking forces to encircle the biomechanoid invasion, or even already launching counter-invasions into the actual biomechanoid homespace while the biomech offensive forces are tied in the ass-end of Bragspace.

And, like, the Brags are doing this without actually reducing their force levels in the USS-Wild Space-DMZ. And this biomechanoid incident can be one of the dozen minor wars the BSE is waging simultaneously at its borders just to keep its perpetual war economy going, and to give an external foe for its populace to HATE. And to keep the military, and its various stratas (from ragtag conscript hordes and rustbucket paleoships, all up to elite cybrag supersoldiers and Byzon-class planetoids) on their toes.

[Shroom Man 777]

On a note, this could oddly lead to bits in SOTS where it's the Bragulan Imperial Legions of Liberation going "Proletariats we have come to free you from your alienoid oppressors and bring justice to the great peoples!" while actually dropping into planets on nuclear ramjet-propelled ekranodropships and saving people and being big damn heroes... and nuking the crap out of everything while they're at it.

[Invictus]

On a note, this could oddly lead to bits in SOTS where it's the Bragulan Imperial Legions of Liberation going "Proletariats we have come to free you from your alienoid oppressors and bring justice to the great peoples!" while actually dropping into planets on nuclear ramjet-propelled ekranodropships and saving people and being big damn heroes... and nuking the crap out of everything while they're at it.

WHy not? It's never been clearly explored what the Bragulans actually do to subjugated alien species.

[Shroom Man 777]

Keep them in homogenized patches of space that'll be less privileged than Bragworlds, while making sure they're still properly Byzonized and ideologically pure with loyalist puppet regimes in place, I guess. This may or may not also include forced relocation, if the Brags think their worlds are useful, and have lousy fringe worlds in need of terraforming, which would be an ideal job for conquered races.

[Magister Militum]

While I normally don't like politically homogenous species defined by a particular culture/mindset/whatever, I can dig the biomechanoids. It also speaks volumes as to the military-industrial power of Bragule that they can indefinitely keep the biomechanoids at bay because its politically convenient.

[Shroom Man 777]

Most might not even know what the origin species of the biomechanoids are like, and most encounters would be of the grotesque first-generation slaved races or the more frankenstinian mixed up genetic mishmash of the later generations. The original species might not even exist anymore.

[Siege]

I like the idea that the Brags are completely exhausting the armies of biofreaks because it's convenient to keep them around as a threat instead of just stomping on them (forever). Presumably, as they get more desperately overextended and begin to slowly realize just how effin' huge the Star Empire really is, their experimentations get more freaky too, in an effort to hustle up the flesh required to keep their torture train rolling.

[Invictus]

I like the idea that the Brags are completely exhausting the armies of biofreaks because it's convenient to keep them around as a threat instead of just stomping on them (forever). Presumably, as they get more desperately overextended and begin to slowly realize just how effin' huge the Star Empire really is, their experimentations get more freaky too, in an effort to hustle up the flesh required to keep their torture train rolling.

And the Bragulans just keep on rolling them for biomechtech that might be useful to the Empire.

It's like, thanks freaky borg dudes, you're showing us how to build a better generation of cybrags and we'll just be reverse-engineering all these desperate innovations you're throwing at the invasion front to benefit to proletariat and the Imperator's armies.

[Shroom Man 777]

Yes, that's a great idea. And makes the upper Bragulan echelons, and Byzon himself, all the bigger bastards to think of things in those terms.