I'm interested in both comments and criticism on writing style as well as high concept for the backstory to the project I'm currently working on. Synopsis: Humans and other sentients struggle to survive in the aftermath of a galaxy-wide war that has crippled but not defeated their once invincible foe. Yet even as myriad empires and cultures are recovering and rebuilding, a troubling conspiracy is at work that may undermine them all. Story Once upon a time the Galaxy was populated by over 100 quintillion sentient beings. Then the Siegers appeared. In the span of only a few centuries the Siegers reduced most civilizations to ashes, devouring the life energy of almost every sentient they encountered. Entire worlds were lost, empires that had stood against time crumbled and the very fabric of space itself was ripped apart. It was the greatest cataclysm any race had ever known. The survivors, though hampered by immense gulfs in distance and culture, eventually knit together a tenuous alliance dedicated to finding some way to stop the Sieger onslaught. Old enemies set aside differences and forged new bonds. Races joined together to initiate crash projects around the Galaxy. A Sentient Allegiance was born. Though the new Allegiance made great strides, for a time nothing worked. It seemed that the survivors, unable to reason with or bargain with or even understand the Sieger hordes, were doomed to an eternity of hiding and harrowed flight. Then, in their darkest hour, a stray light of hope shined. The answer came from an unlikely source--a rude, upstart race of bipeds known variously as humans or Terrans. This near-barbarian species, so new to space flight that they still employed interstellar jump drives, was blessed both with brilliant AI and a perspective untainted by conservative Galactic traditionalism. The solution the humans found lay in what they had come to call the Möbius Strip. Known otherwise to sophisticated Galactics as the Weave, or the "Allways," it was a gift from the First Ones in the form of an ancient network of wormholes. This network made circumnavigation of the Galaxy possible. For over a billion years it had served as a highway for commerce, cultural exchange, conquest and communication. Now it would become a super weapon. The humans and their supporters succeeded in rallying the other races. The Allegiance marshaled technology and resources. Ships crept from their scattered colonies throughout the Weave to join in stealth fleets. They dared, for the first time in centuries, to approach the core worlds, around which the bulk of the Sieger hordes floated, still digesting the life force of entire populations even as their underlings searched for more. Simultaneously, the Allegiance was in position and ready to drive the monsters from the Galaxy. It almost worked. Yet in the hour of their triumph, as the Allegiance sent coordinated distortions through the key wormholes of the Möbius Strip and rejoiced as swarms of Siegers were destroyed or driven back, something went terribly wrong. The Weave shattered. Some wormholes became unstable. Others collapsed in on themselves spectacularly, devouring nearby fleets. Still others shifted dramatically, leaping light years or even kiloparsecs away. In some cases wormholes launched straight into their host stars. On worlds throughout the Galaxy, they entered atmospheres, emptied oceans into deep space, or even scoured continent-long radioactive canyons down into the bedrock of worlds before sinking into the planets' cores. Some believe the failure to have been one of scientific error. Miscalculation. Others strongly suspected sabotage. Those that saw signs and portents took it as divine retribution for sins long past. Whatever it was, it left the Allegiance fractured and isolated, literally centuries apart from one another. Many remnant colonies, reliant on the Weave for both power and supplies and ignorant of how to build even the most primitive interstellar drive, took the loss as a final blow and slid down the technology ladder. Those that maintained star flight, like the humans, would come to find a Galaxy transformed. Though not gone, they would learn of Siegers drastically reduced both in rapaciousness and number. Whereas the monsters had once earned their name by encircling planets and slowly devouring the minds of the panicked population, most now seemed unwilling to approach more than a few light years or parsecs from any wormhole. Those that do so now often find themselves fodder for the steadily sharpening claws the Galaxy’s recovering militaries. It has been centuries now since the last major Sieger attacks. In that time, the surviving, scattered Galactics have begun to rebuild. They are beginning to rediscover interstellar flight, to remap the remnants of the Allways, the Weave, the Möbius Strip, to expand and advance. From the ashes, new empires are beginning to flourish. But the danger has not passed. Though held at bay for now, troubling hints from the fringe regions of civilized space indicate that the Siegers might be changing, adapting, possibly even regrouping--some say multiplying. Worse yet, in this new era of prosperity and regrowth, the old unifying purpose of the Allegiance seems lost, forgotten by new, ambitious leaders quick to take their empires to war. Most disturbing of all, though, are pieces of an emerging puzzle, found only in the fragments of spotty archives, in the ruins of distant civilizations. Or even in the odd unsolved murder. Though incredible, though impossible to believe, some say the jigsaw pieces point undeniably to nothing less than a conspiracy: A conspiracy by nullify the protections against the Siegers, to dissolve the wormhole wards created by the Sentient Allegiance, to bring down the shield and welcome them in... as servants and allies.

Quote: Original post by evolutional
Interesting story.

Thank you!

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I'm intrigued about the scattered races idea, would they be scattered in groups of their own race or would several races be inhabiting a single system?

At the start of the game there would be a mix of half monocultural and half polycultural civilizations in about 10 to 70% of the galaxy (depending on difficulty level). This should create a plethora of governments, ranging from the starting area where all races coexist peacefully to regions filled with fighting and ethnic violence.

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Would any tow or more cultures have evolved together after the strip collapsed? Pooling both their resources and cultures in order to survive?

Yes, very much so. Specifically, two races have survived by using the psionic energy of others (one as batteries, another as amplifiers); others have unified under a single religion; still others have modified their genome enough to allow for racial intermixing (sometimes with the aid of nanotech).

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Those that fell down the technology ladder - where are they now?

In some cases, they've died out, leaving sprawling high-tech ruins or outposts guarded by automated servants; others have reverted to hunter gatherer societies; most have become a weird mix of high-tech and low-tech, where most people no longer understand the highly automated systems (and may even worship them). This means you may find sword carrying barbarians using ancient maglev tubes; planetary empires strung together by sailing ships and laser defense satellites; or gun totting nomads lost in undersea cities run by batty AI.

The low-tech / mixed-tech societies I'm hoping should be the most interesting, as they offer the most opportunity for wild creativity.

Sounds like a good background story. But I have a couple of thoughts.

Since it was the Terrans plan, then perhaps in the eyes of many races the Terrans are seen as betrayers of the galaxity and responsible for the collapse of civilization.

Also I think it would be interesting to the have the collapse cause wide disruptions in civilizations. For instance a formally large empire might be shattered now and the various parts of the empire all exist at diffrent techlevels. Form the hightech core to primitive in the more distance parts. Effectivly causing each region to become its own faction despite the fact that they are all the same race.

Quote: Original post by TechnoGoth
Since it was the Terrans plan, then perhaps in the eyes of many races the Terrans are seen as betrayers of the galaxity and responsible for the collapse of civilization.

Yes, I thought that since most players will want to play Terrans this would be an interesting situation. You might encounter a wide number of surviving cultures (though certainly not all, or even half) who have scapegoated the humans.

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Also I think it would be interesting to the have the collapse cause wide disruptions in civilizations. For instance a formally large empire might be shattered now and the various parts of the empire all exist at diffrent techlevels. Form the hightech core to primitive in the more distance parts. Effectivly causing each region to become its own faction despite the fact that they are all the same race.

Yes, exactly! This gives a valid reason why you might in one part of the galaxy find a race of heavies and then in another find that same race a fragmented empire steeped in civil war-- and in another, find them to be allies. (Aside from story, it's a sneaky way to reuse some character assets as well, even if their ships look different).

Quote: Original post by Estok
The words are from an alien, but the overall tone and content do not convince me so. The first three paragraphs do not set the tone that I would expect written by an alien from an technologically advanced society.

Thanks for the feedback. I'm not sure I was going for the idea that it was written by an alien, but I was going for an omniscient POV, which is why the humans are introduced almost as barbarians.

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The starting phrase "once upon a time ago" doesn't match the tone. I would expect there to be more precision and objectiveness in the writing.

I'm not sure I follow you here. Is "once upon a time" too associated with a fairytale? Would you expect something specific like, "In the year blah blah blah" (which is something I think too many SF stories do).

What would make this more evocative of myth or legend? That was the overall tone I was shooting for: Broad overview, maybe almost a campfire tale.

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The second paragraph also doesn't fit well. In that paragraph, you gave a mosaic depiction of the rampage of the Siegers, but at the same time it doesn't tell me any substance of what they are or they did precisely.

Do you think that they should be conceptually specified right away? They're introduced as some force that destroyed civilizations and devoured life energy. How might that better be communicated?

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The third paragraph is also strange as you wrote "Old enemies set aside differences and forged new bonds. Races joined together to initiate crash projects around the Galaxy." I would expect the races be more involved among each other even before the Siegers, and their politices and communications be more complex than what suggested by the sentences.

But this paragraph is talking about the survivors, who are living in a drastically changed environment where supporting infrastructure is just gone. I'm not sure, by comparison, if a great plague or invading force struck the earth that everyone would be friends all of a sudden. Initially, you might still have places with long standing enmity still at each other's throats, probably trying to take advantage of things. However, I imagine that as losses mounted, they would set aside their differences.

In terms of complexity, do you have a recommendation as to how that level of texture could be communicated given the space alotted?

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The sentences address the futuristic societies as if they were governed by cavemen capable of interstellar contact.

Could you explain what you mean here?

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Some phrases also don't fit well in my opinion, like "Entire worlds", "or even kiloparsecs away", "or even scoured...".

Are you saying grammatically or content-wise? Personally, I think the wormhole stuff is a bit too detailed, but it's critical to explaining the environment and hopefully firing the imagination.

Thanks again for the input!

I don't believe the text should appear as being written from an omniscient point of view, because of the large amount of dark areas and unkonwn - or hidden - information in it. Neither should the view be that of a subjective, almost uninformed witness, for such a view would be tainted with personal opinions (such as scapegoating either humans, or a prideful race that could not allow the human plan - or anybode else's plan - to succeed, or the local village idiots, or whatever).

The point of view is obviously that of the surviving colonies, but what is important is that it is not the point of view of any individual colony all by itself, rather a carefully compiled database containing information from many various worlds.

I would suggest, for this, something along the lines of the Van Richten guides: Van Richten was a character in the Ravenloft D&D setting, who hunted vampires, werewolves, ghosts and similar abomination. What was interesting is that the books he "wrote" were actual D&D rulebooks that were presented as if he had written down all his experience, studies, recollections of witnesses.

Maybe a daring archivist in your world attempted to create such a database himself?