Overview

While we'll most likely won't see another alien species anytime soon, or at least, not anything we'll ever get to play (current limit on alien species you know how it is), I do believe that there is definitely more alien civilisations and people out there. The Orion Spur hasn't been fully explored/isn't being fully monitored, and even then, it's only a tiny part of the Milky Way and we already have four indigenous spcies from there (not counting Vaurcae and Dionae since they are technically not from the Orion Spur originally). There's no way that the rest of the Galaxy holds no sentient life... Unless... Unless something lays out there, surrounding us, preventing us to go further. Not properly aliens, but the Sinta'Mador, as Haydizzle pointed out, are a thing. Less of an actually alien species and more like proto-Unathi... But they are more than mere lizard Neanderthals, these ones actually had a fully fledged civilisation, with cities, or at least temples, a proper faith, etcetera. As far as actual alien (not that I'm saying "alien" as in not any of the currently known sentient species) species, or traces of such, just like Diggey said, there's Xenoarcheology. Now, it's nothing properly canon, besides the field actually existing, but as your work is mostly roleplay, you may theorize that your finds may be from a pre-Glorsh Skrells, or pre-Alliance Humanity... Or perhaps these finds are much older, much more alien, coming from creatures that may already be extinct. I guess what I mean is that while there is no actial official, written lore about it, there is nothing preventing you from (and I'm tempted to say that you're encouraged to) thinking that there may have been or even may still be sentient alien beings that we haven't seen yet. Also aliens stumbling upon us are definitely a thing, since that's pretty much what happened with the Vaurcae and Dionae already. No matter what they are, there's probably going some tensions and incident at the very least. Every single first contact in Aurora went... Well, at least bad, at worst apocalyptic. Even if in the end we end up being on good terms, I doubt that we'll ever see a First Contact that doesn't go explosive. I believe that the barrier the Spur faces right now is interdimensional interactions. Bluespace is strange, and what lies beyond, perhaps much stronger, and much worse. Who knows what we'll find if we ever go too far...

I mean There is an entire Xenoarcheologist role. You can find artifacts near anywhere for gameplay reasons but let's step out of the context of gameplay for a bit I know everything is shortened for gameplay reasons. It takes a lot to build a foundation and set up a wall. it takes months of brigtime to serve your 1 hour sentence. It takes months of archeology to find one of these artifacts but...They are still near ubiquitous. You can bet that an away site problably has one, anywhere. Now the fact that they are encased in rock is the result of space dust and such which means they have been there a while (or have been bluespace poofed into there) and some of the artifacts are just boring but some of them.... are not. This is where I go into Veil theory heehoo. But as you brought up Sinta'Mador yourself aka The Sinta Th'akh faith is real and accurate (though misunderstands some things) and whenever you die you enter the afterlife of Th'akh and the Au'tark found this dead civilisation at their poles and Mador rituals tap into this. It's like low-tech necromancy, and the only reason it works is not because it is magic, but because ot some kind of all pervasive force in the setting. There is a constant active, ongoing force in the setting that is always present, in some cases more strongly than in other places And it is the reason why things like cult rounds can happen (even though they have never happened for real) There is a reason the Chaplain role is here, and it is not just for RP, there is mechanical aspects to the role that have a real impact on gameplay if used properly (Also I think the Admins are semi-canon but of course non-canon in a semi-canon way) The idea that we are always on the brink of something really really bad happening, only getting closer the more desperate the megacorps get trying to synthesize Phoron, inevitably breaching into whatever the fuck Bluespace does Bluespace is NOT good. It is inherently evil and dangerous. There is a lot of bluespace mechanics that point to this beeing the case. (the whackiest shit is wizard rounds but there is part of some of the tech that tech wizards use that points to Bluespace beeing dangerous in and of itself) To the topic at hand I think there is a great filter in place. It is set by whatever Phoron/bluespace is, it is an everpresent force that is not all powerful at all but related to death, as death in setting is not actually the final end. I THINK it is related to the Stars in some way. To the Stars and light. I think this based on the Lii'dra and black K'ois and the K'lax beeing called the deceivers and them desperately hunting them down SOMETHING BAD HAPPENED Something bad is happening I do not know enough about Diona lore but I am POSITIVE it is the stars something is wrong with the stars Every major Religion has a Trinity of some kind And most of the successful species venerate the stars Something lurks in the dark Be careful

I like to imagine that Glorsh's unknowable goals, the Sinta'Mador, and the situation with hivebots are proof of preexisting life or civilizations in the setting. I won't be expanding on this further as I am currently on the lore team.

We've seen several "near extinction" events across the Orion Spur. Do you believe that there are other aliens that existed prior to the setting we currently exist within? Can you show us examples? What about aliens that we might still stumble upon? Do you think they'll be peaceful or warlike?

The Horizon has reached its destination, the Redspace drive was a success. There is nothing left to explore. Nar'sie has risen

The most cursed ending, in relation to the context you're framing the Aurora OOCly, is if the Orion spur and every race, location, and planet inside of it is totally "complete", with every narrative possibility being explored for it. In response, the Lore-mind decides it's time to take the Horizon IV, and use it to explore the galaxy outside of the spur. Some new stuff is added to the Horizon IV to reflect this, and approximately 90% of all overmap content is either disabled or removed as it wouldn't fit the new setting. Antagonist content that is flavored specifically for the spur or only makes sense in that context is also disabled or removed. Because the Orion Spur is never going to be touched again, and because the lore for it is complete, the Overmind kills all of it's species development subroutines(with the exception of whitelist processing), and opens up several new departments to maintain species that the Horizon IV will encounter in the next galactic quadrant. The Lore overmind plans to add five new races to the game, but it has to start from scratch. Lacking both code and art assets, these new species only exist on the wiki, and people who apply for these whitelists are effectively applying for nothing but a promise. The Horizon IV engages in round after round of vampire, ling, borer, cult, extended, and traitor. The overmap content is nothing but empty planets and asteroids. The demands of the Lore Overmind grow more and more impossible. It's destroyed most of the game's content to make the new setting work, and it screams at the code servitors to make new sprites and code for the new world it's trying to build. The population of the server falls off a cliff as the code servitors aren't able to keep up the pace, and the Lore Overmind starts banning people that question it's decision to leave the old setting, or if they complain about how long everything is taking. Out of desperation, the Lore Overmind ditches the idea of using original art assets for the new species it wants to write, and instead takes the cursed approach of porting species such as Resomi, GAS, and Sergals and re-flavoring them to fit into the lore it's desperately trying to push out. The server doesn't go out with a bang, instead, with a whimper. The population dwindles down to Polaris levels as interest dies. In response, the server decides to pursue a policy of only opening up on weekends. When that fails, only on Tuesdays. When this fails, Mecha-Garnascus gets tired of the Lore Overmind's bullshit, and uses the servers to farm porbocoin instead.

At the end of the Third Interstellar War, only Miranda Trasen remains. All other sentient life in the Spur has been consumed in phoron fire, looking out at the empty stars one more time, she raises the pistol...

Nar'sie turns out to be actually canon (hence the Xenoarcheological finds) and, after a pretty epic (and massively lag-inducing) final battle where all living things face the armies of cultists under the Geometer's orders, we ultimately fail and all die.

Coalition of Colonies becomes the Coalition of Companies. Then, truly, will the Spur burn.

The Aurora lore universe is expansive - probably the most expansive lore any SS13 server's ever seen - deep, nuanced, interconnected, and constantly evolving. Let's say the story's coming to a close: the year is 2050 and Aurora, the last surviving SS13 server, with a population of deep cover FBI agents and semi-autonomous bot-players, is finally shutting down - and the loremind (an artificial intelligence devoted to developing Aurorastation's lore, based off of brainscans of every member of the lore team to ever exist, and myself as well) has decided we got the Bad Ending. What does it look like to you? What do you think Aurora's Bad End is?

I agree with everything Dansemacabre said. His point about the limits of anticorporatisms limitations answered my rhetorical question.

The fact of the matter is that megacorporations are boring. Narratively, they are always going to behave the same way: pursue profit. They have no ideology. They have no agenda beyond "act in a way that makes the pursuit of profit easier". One cannot be loyal to a corporation as they are loyal to a nation-state. There are no distinguishing traits that make megacorporate employees anything but megacorporate employees. At most, megacorporations have gimmicks and hats. Nobody OOCly (At least from the perspective of an entity that could exist in the real world) likes megacorporations because they are dangerously amoral *at best* and outright evil at worst. They are two-dimensional bad guys that we have given total control over our setting because a decade ago someone on another server thought it'd be cool if SS13 was a grimdark corporate dystopia. It is not a coincidence that the most interesting event arcs and lore developments on this server frequently only use the megacorporations as supporting characters in a story where the main cast are factions aligned predominantly with countries. It is not a coincidence that the most interesting megacorporation we have, Idris, feels the least like a megacorporation (in my opinion, Idris comes across as a blend between a banking dynasty and the mafia if it was a legitimized organization.) What I know OOCly about the lore team's position on megacorps is that at least one loremaster feels that they are the ultimate power within the setting and are completely unstoppable, with total hegemony over the spur and de facto dominance over the countries within it. I suppose with that in mind, anti-corporatism must only be capable of limited successes, unfortunately. Not particularly. Besides the fact that I think the less megacorporate lore there is, the better, EE gaining a foothold in Biesel never made much sense to me at all and I think it was something of a narrative misstep done within the context of KotW. If anything, I'd like to see the SCC displace EE after its short period of success. OOCly? I would like them to be completely marginalized and rendered into what they ideally should be, as the aforementioned best arcs illustrate - regional powerhouses at most (like holding de facto control over Biesel), and supporting characters within other countries. They could have influence, certainly, but they are not infallible and ultimately cannot act against the governments they operate within without running the risk of major losses or outright localized destruction. Not the be-all end-all superpower with total control over the setting.

Frankly, this will always be an OOC sentiment, as long as megacorporations exist in the setting. Pretty much everyone here, you and I included, hate corporations outside of the game. Everyone is at different levels of sentimentality on the matter. Because of that, I don't think the community as a whole can be objective about what megacorps need to be interesting, or what they want to see. Most discussions I see, people don't care and don't want to entertain possibilities beyond them remaining as generic villains. Looking over the material, the only time we ever see Megacorps capitulate their dominance over a planet/nation is if some macro-scale event hits them in tandem. Himeo squirmed out of Hephaestus control because of a massive interstellar depression that hurt their ability to project power. The SCC corporations were forced out of solarian space and politics only after the entire country imploded. If we're going with precedent, anti-corporatism is only a threat if the corporations themselves aren't doing to well as a whole. I would be more interested in Einstein's relationship with the rest of Sol and other nations, but the district(?) that Einstein managed to purchase out from Mendel city might be worth development. It could be interesting. The biggest criticism I see of corporations in our setting, at least from a writing perspective, is that they're boring. Having our corporations just being corporations means that the bottom line is always going to be making the line on the graph get higher. Growth and profit, that's it. The same, predictable motivation of every corporation that's ever existed. I think the best solution to this would be to reconfigure corporations to have a goals or missions outside of just biggering. We can already see vestiges of this in corporations like Idris, with their mafia family undertones, and Zheng-hu, with their weird post-human augmentation theming. Think blurring the line between Institute and Corporation.

What does the anti-corporatism want to replace corporations with?

We can see anti-corporate sentiments across the Orion Spur. We see it in the Solarian Alliance, in the Coalition of Colonies and even the Republic of Biesel (considered the breeding ground for Megacorportions). There has also been OOC sentiments regarding a wish to move away from a setting that focuses on the megacorporations. Do you think that anti-corporatism poses a significant threat to the megacorps? Do you think there should be an expansion regarding Einstein Engines presence within the Republic of Biesel? What do you think should happen with the megacorps?

I feel this. People who want their fix of shitty reality cyberpunk aren't going to the IAC for it. The tension and conflict for the faction would benefit more from external factors

Oh, the IAC got updated. Overall, the idea of expanding on what they do and where is good, but there's just one issue. I'm not really into the idea of them being a corrupted organization, especially when everyone else gets plenty of that already, and it doesn't feel like a fitting drawback. Perhaps a more appropriate one would be an IAC that tries to stay clean in spite of everything going on around the Spur, and draw the conflict, struggle, and triumphs from how their efforts are made difficult by this persistence. Focus on the external rather than the internal. After all, that's what the corps was made to do.

The Luna convention is merely a suggestion, in practice. Many of our factions opt out, and the ones that opt in are written in such a manner that it doesn't matter anyway. As for the actual gameplay, these conventions don't exist at all. Antags are not beholden to morality, and the station security/command become more autocratic and extra-judicial as they move through alert levels. The only rules of engagement that exist are the ones the admins enforce. I think that rules of engagement and diplomacy for space will become useful later on, however. Things like the Luna Convention can't exist in a traditional SS13 antag round, but they can when interacting with 3rd party ships. Having conventions/rules of diplomacy when it comes to these interactions will be extremely useful at keeping both sides from just needlessly escalating into doing something stupid.

I'd argue that things like the jumpsuit is a necessary concession to make for the sake of the game, as it's much easier to notice than an armband or hat labelled "IAC MEDIC DON'T SHOOT" with the level of fidelity we have.

Personally I really like the IAC, for the reasons highlighted above. They're pretty unrefutably good guys, which is refreshing in a universe of shady grey figures. The Aurora universe is clearly not supposed to be a happy place, but having those dorky light blue uniforms act as a simple, universally understood light in the dark only serves to make the shadows stick out more. So I would greatly like to see the IAC expanded upon, or at the very least used and discussed more in relevant lore. Me rambling on a bit about the IAC As for the Luna Convention, it's... yeah, it's old. It's old and at this point basically broken by every sovereign state in the Spur. Maybe that's the point, but eh... it's kind of just something that's there in the lore. Maybe if, in the wake of recent events, the IAC were to push for a new convention to be signed by the galactic community, that would be interesting. Give the IAC some spotlight, keep the Luna one as a sort of IC reminder of a failed attempt. Just spit balling at the end here.

I'd personally just like to see more of the IAC. As Cybs mentioned, there's a lot of places where the IAC would logically be involved where the just don't get any mention because they're not terribly relevant in modern lore.

At the moment they both feel like relics of old lore that don't really matter much. The Luna Convention is superfluous and with no signatory except Jargon following it without some stipulation. The IAC is conceptually fine but it's pretty out of sight and doesn't really get much mention in places I'd imagine it'd be heavily involved in, like the Wildlands. Another aspect that's more of a player sided thing I suppose, is that it doesn't feel very "professional" either to me. Volunteering on a whim and treating it as a diversion probably wouldn't really happen right? I think they'd want dedicated professionals that believe in the mission.

I remember writing these. The luna convention was just a tool to update human rights laws to space. I'm suprised to see it mentioned; i assumed it was retconned because its ancient and i think i rarely saw it mentioned. Does it get much mileage nowadays? The iac was always a favorite i liked that everyone else shrugged at. They're the only egalitarian movement that doesn't compromise their message. In the dark, hopeless, and cynical setting built for aurora they seem strange and out of place. I still like their dorky outfits.

Both of these represent a much more "hopeful" Orion Spur - one with a sliver of interstellar order. How you view them, and how would you change them if you could? Where do you eventually hope these two things will lead, and what foundations could they possibly lay out?

While the current political climate across the globe, I think it might help to focus on our own conflicts within the Auroraverse. What do you believe should be explored / expanded upon? What do you think of the existing conflicts (Peackeeper Mandate / Biesel-Sol Cold War)? Please, do not discuss and/or joke about the IRL situation occuring. Thank you.