Dark Space Humans / Scarab Subfaction

[Aphelion]

Lore Impact: Medium/Large

 

Species: Offworlder Humans

 

Short Description: Unconfirmed masses of spaceships, stations, and lineages leading to several speculated scarab ships that should exist but cannot be found, with the occasional encounters and discoveries of unnervingly huge populations that are lost between the stars.

 

How will this be reflected on-station?: It adds another potential theory for origins of mysterious things/ antagonist gimicks. Finding an unknown station with no IFF transponder way out at the edge of the system could then potentially be a Dark Space Human station where something terrible happened, it could potentially enable more offmap roles and intrigue. 

 

Do you understand that the project may change over time in ways you may not foresee once it is handed to the loreteam?: Yes.

 

Long Description: 

This is more of a logical conclusion based on missing scarab ships, and an interesting concept among offworlders that I feel like has not been explored too much here.  The premise is that the space between the stars is mind bogglingly huge, and that there may be alternative ways of living that are not star-centric, that scarabs seem most likely to manage to accomplish.

This phenomena of unconfirmed humans that should exist has lead to countless expeditions for several lightyears around Arusha, combing gently through the endless dirth of inter-stellar space for assumed colonies and groups to make first contact with. On Xanu there could be an entire field of study built around the history of the Scarab fleets combined with Astronomy, for the purpose of calculating and discovering these still lost ships, that in many cases are abandoned husks of ships infested with greimorians and other stranger life forms, but in others are entirely self sufficient stations or groups of stations, and open entire new opportunities for trade.

Occasionally, much larger colonies are discovered between the stars. Ships having made makeshift refineries and harvested materials from rogue planets to expand beyond capacity. Sometimes a find of one Dark Space Human station will lead to the discovery of hundreds of other stations in a complicated network across lightyears of deep exo-stellar space. Many scholars believe that several of these networks conduct trade with the Golden Deep, but a sparringly few remains and strange encrypted signals have only hinted at this.

In spite of potential for profit, contact with these lost colonies is usually difficult, as they have been alone long enough that stories of Shaitan have lead to an expanded disbelief, or xenophobia in many cases. There are a handful of confirmed Dark Space Human networks that have been open hostile to foreigners, to who first contact has been impossible to actually accomplish from their staunch refusal to respond on any frequency, and open hostility to approaching unknown ships.

Basically, there are billions of unknown humans who live in deep space, and are not even known about. It is bordering on 'a new world' so I get if this gets thrown out, but the thing this subfaction of Scarabs could provide us with is a nearly Atlantean kind of mystery about lost offshoots of Scarabs who live in the perpetual night, and have strange technologies, customs, and information. Dark Space Humans could be a more recent discovery, and not be a playable faction as a result, but more of a recently discovered phenomena that has driven many conspiracy theorists wild with the potential for the space between the stars being teeming with civilization. It could also give the 'Scarabs going their own way'/'Scarabs should not return to planets' mentality on a few of the ships in the fleet a fairly strong argument, to what was previously certain death, many Scarabs could look to the Dark Space Humans as a potential avenue to learn more about surviving in deep deep space.

 

Edited October 2, 2023 by Aphelion
Fixing my god awful writing slightly.

[Aphelion]

Also, on the hostile no-contact stations. We could do a full on 'Sentinel Island negotiation' type event, eventually. Let's say they have something that the Conglomerate wants, but the lost colony is technically part of the Scarab Fleets, and so under the supposed protection of the Coalition of Colonies. The SCC wouldn't be able to just take what they want immediately from them, but the Horizon would basically need to be a center for first contact with the long-lost scarabs, and need to establish some kind of rapport with them, and convince the Scarabs that the SCC are not Shaitan. 

[La Villa Strangiato]

Howdy. The lore team has ruled that the Scarabs already had the Sadars as an exile faction, so Dark Space Humans as exiles or xenophobes is a little redundant. It also strains the suspension of disbelief for there to be billions of lost Scarabs.

For these reasons, we'll be denying this app as it stands. However, we may consider the idea of a lost colony (not specifically Scarab) for a future event. Thank you for applying and apologies for the wait.