Star Gods’ Sandbox

Let’s think about the planets a bit, not all of them, just a few that jump out.

Alld

Tags: Eugenic Cults, Mercenaries

Alld is being warred over by local warlords who keep mercenary armies in their thrall. The warlords are powerful, as powerful as a mortal human can be, some even moreso. They believe this power comes from breeding and bloodlines but it is from ancient nanites that they don’t understand.

Alld is gripped in a cold war with flare-ups from time to time. Hot war is reserved for Papadoudo.

Usaus

Tags: Forbidden Tech, Local Hegemon

Once this was the seat of the sector’s ruling government but instability from the Black Hole decimated their technology. With their computers and navy decimated, the planet is a once-proud shadow of its glory. Without the Usausian Navy to regulate, Alldish Warlords have run rampant throughout the sector. Remnants of their navy still orbit the planet, filled with the dead sailors floating within.

Forbidden Tech, though! Maybe it wasn’t the unstable Black Hole. Maybe there is an AI behind this and that is what caused the tech level breakdown, taking eyes off of this planet.

Kordie Pria

Tags: Local Tech, Quarantined World

I love that it is quarantined and has a local specialty. The local specialty is definitely a weapon, somehow forged in the nearby Black Hole. Ancient Defense Satellites destroy ships that try to land. They sealed themselves off when Usaus fell.

I imagine Alldish Warlords trying to get to Kordie Pria’s surface, with myths of whichever Warlord gains a Kordie Pria-made blade will be the Sector Hegemon with the power to spread to other sectors and become an emperor.

Debra

Tags: Dying Race, Pretech Cultists

Ancient post-humans guarding technology they no longer understand. Debrans know they have lost their legacy and hope to gain it back or hand it off to someone worthy before they go extinct.

Papadoudo

Tags: Cyclical Doom, Battleground

This is where the Alldish Warlords fight their most brutal battles, leaving the planet a wreckage as dropships and battle-mechs rain down on the surface. Centuries of experimental weapons have triggered a doom that has come before that will leave the planet without life. None of the warlords want to evacuate, not wanting to give their rivals any ground.

Factions are coming together.

I need a few Alldish Warlords noble houses linked to broken understandings of Olde Earth, like shitty whyte supremacists appropriation of Norse icons. The ancient, sad Debran Tech-Priests who are falling into extinction. Usuali rangers who have the sector’s governmental history in their hands but not the tech to govern.

And still, the aliens who are watching, studying these humans.

I’d flesh out the factions just a touch more. Sectors Without Number has really fun tools for making and recording factions. I’d write down a few before play and then get to it.

Next week I might grab a few tables from Godbound and see if I can jar loose some ideas, fleshing out courts and ruins for our Star Gods to explore.