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Worldbuilding: A New World, a World of Conflict and Sorrow

Aaron Fox · 2019-01-03T12:43:25+00:00

This is a setting that has been poking me at the back of my head for a while since bullethead of SB read the novelization of the pilot episode of seaQuest DSV. It is inspired by Anno 2070/2205, Front Mission, seaQuest, Submarine TITANS, SubWar 2050, Nexus: The Jupiter Incident, among others. While the previous worldbuilding threads were focused on either creating in-universe versions of the US and Japan, unfucking the shitshow that is Gundam SEED, and creating a world where it's a bastard child of Frostpunk and Day after Tomorrow with all the shit that such a setting would entail... this is more of a 'mixed bag' setting. A mix of optimism and pessimism, where ideologies can be used for good and evil, with hefty 'the moral calculus is almost alien to us' bits... The Setting Basics The world is an ‘almost worst case scenario’ for global warming Here we’re talking about entire sections of continents being underwater and entire sections of the Earth literally uninhabitable due to the heat To put things into perspective, Washington DC and New York City are both restructured to be underwater cities while Memphis has become a major sea port The entire Saudi peninsula and some of the surrounding area is literally a death sentence, and it is used by Iran and Israel to exile anyone convicted of a high crime that didn’t get the death penalty Due to the massive change in weather patterns, the food supply had been constantly in flux for the better part of one and a half centuries This is exacerbated by the reality that vertical farming was far harder than it looked and most nations defacto or genuinely banning GMO research Most nations would later reverse this or literally collapse into anarchy This led to mass starvation -which would kill billions-, resource wars -which would kill even more billions-, and ecoterrorism -which, again, will kill billions-, all of which has caused the greatest death toll since the time of the Black Plague... The death toll from all that is 5 billion over a period of five decades, or averaging a hundred million per year or roughly 5,475.7 people per day Ecoterrorism carries the highest punishment on the planet, as any eco-terrorist will have to live with the fact that when they get caught their family is going to hell with them Most Ecoterrorism is unleashing synthetic plagues or creating monsters (be animals created from the ground up or modified uplifts specifically designed to be weapons) designed to kill as many people as possible However it is recorded that whenever these terrorists manage to get an atomic device, they will use it to kill as many people as possible, much like what happened to LA and San Diego or Hamburg -among others- during the first two centuries of the new era (i.e. smoking radioactive craters) It should be noted that any pro-Ecological group is at best highly suspect, given that much of the ecoterrorism has come from these groups The only group that isn’t considered to be suspicious is the companies under the Ecological Initiative Corporation, which has a strictly self-defensive mandate for its member corporations… and anyone who breaks this mandate is usually cast out, with those that violate the Eco having the perpetrator's families executed and the perpetrator marked for death Instead of the worst case scenario being 80 or 114 meters of sea rise, it is 65 meters As such, the world looks quite different… This is in part by the precursors of the current governments to stabilize the situation Nation-States effectively no longer exist in the current era The world -and all of Sol- is split up between several political-economic blocks called “Federal Confederations” or ‘FedCons’ for short The governments of these FedCons vary from standard cybernetic representative democracies to monarchies and everything in between It should be noted that it isn’t uncommon for FedCons to literally own corporations outright, many development corporations are actually government divisions for development of new islands There are several FedCons that aren’t based on Earth at all, and are usually break-away states that broke away from their parent FedCons during the early days of space colonization (NWE 150-250) Outside the FedCons, the mega-corporations (‘Meg-Corps’) rule Numerous mega-corporations exist, with various technologies and capabilities Should be noted that like the FedCons, the Mega-Corps run the gambit of ‘being decent despite being for profit’ to ‘Shere Khan Machiavellian’ to pre-New World ‘psychopathic’ It should be noted that some of these corporations have made alliances to ensure that the FedCons don’t intrude on their business Two of the major ‘corporate alliances’ are the Global Resources and Energy Trust (GRET or simply ‘Trust’ for short) and the Eden Ecological Initiative Corporation (EEIC or simply ‘Eco’ for short) While the EEIC would rely mostly on defense forces, the GRET has the mercenary group White Sharks on their payroll The Scientific Academy for Advanced Technologies (or SAAT for short) generally doesn’t care for politics, only advancing science with few moral scruples and is known to be an ally of not only these corporate alliances but also independent corporations SAAT is similar to GRET that it has its own mercenary force to protect its interests; this mercenary force -known as the Black Octopi- is also armed with some of the latest military equipment that SAAT can produce The SpaceTech Conglomerate is a minor but growing space-based Meg-Corp that has been making waves since its founding in NWE 250 out of several space-based corporations There are independent corporations (called IMCs for short) like the Crayven Corporation that are rather successful in this new world… There is only one supranational organization that isn’t a Meg-Corp, that would be the organization SolForce SolForce is a slowly growing organization, but is constantly screwed in terms of funding, material, and personnel SolForce has been forced to be largely independent of any group within the Sol system Despite this, SolForce has been slowly growing in power, but not enough to challenge the FedCons and Meg-Corps in decisive battle in NWE 320 In addition to the radically changed landscape thanks to global warming, new islands of numerous sizes have been discovered These islands have popped up across the globe, and are rich in natural resources and provided fertile soil for farming In addition to these new islands, numerous undersea colonies have sprung up Technologically, this new world is quite advanced in many ways compared to our own, particularly in terms of submarine, biotech, cybernetics, robotics, AI, comp-tech, nuclear energy, and space tech being the most obvious With the push for nuclear technology, fusion has started to replace fission… although at an immensely reduced rate due to the Helium 3 requirements Most fission reactors are of the Thorium or Molten Salt type, although there are still some traditional fission reactors in operation, mostly as breeder and reprocessing facilities Various uplifts are relatively uncommon in Sol, and this is mostly thanks to SAAT’s morally dubious experimentation and some ecoterrorist groups trying to weaponize uplifts to kill off humanity… Despite this, the vast majority of FedCons and Meg-Corps treat uplifts with some respect at the minimum, those that don’t generally don’t last all that long The vast majority of the solar system is under the control of various Meg-Corps and FedCons, with SolForce trying to keep the peace… Luna is one of the few bodies in Sol to be owned by only one group, and that would be SolForce, and anywhere else is split between the various factions Mars and Jupiter are two of the most common battlegrounds in Sol, with fighting almost constant over the various resources and research opportunities The current era is called ‘the New World Era’ or NWE for short The “New World Era” started in 2100 The ‘current’ year is NWE 340, which is 2440 in the old calendar The “New World Era” started after the events of ‘The Upheavals’, a series of wars, disastrous climate change events, and other horrific events which caused immense hardship and death The current population of humanity is 10 billion on Earth, 2 billion across the solar system (with Mars being the largest with 850 million humans); uplifts number in 4 billion on Earth, and another 1 billion across the solar system War is a common occurrence in the New World Era, particularly over resources like drinkable water and other vital necessities for life Thanks in part to these new technologies and the limited resources on Earth, war over vital resources and land is extremely common Nuclear weapons aren’t as taboo as they once were, the only reason that they’re not used as often is due to the fact they’re expensive pieces of ordinance, especially since the depletion of weaponizable fission materials (be elements like Uranium and Plutonium or the newly discovered element Starcorium) on Earth and the Helium-3 requirement for laser-initiated fusion warheads In the years since the Upheavals, a new element has been discovered called ‘Starcorium’ (or simply Corium for short), which sits on 276 on the periodic table The discovery was made when a series of meteors created deposits of the material on Earth Most of the deposits on Earth are centered around the central Atlantic and Pacific A series of probes on various planets and moons across the solar system showed that there were deposits on various planets and moons of the solar system The major producers of Corium are the colonies of Mars, Titan, Triton, and Iapetus Starcorium’s energy density when undergoing fission is 82% of fusion Starcorium 297 -a somewhat rare isotope of Starcorium- is incredibly useful for creating what would be considered ‘extreme efficiency’ fission warheads, which produce very limited long-term radiation The White Sharks mercenary group and their GERT backers have one of the largest Starcorium-based nuclear stockpiles across the solar system Powered exoskeletons and powered armor is common, requiring far better armaments to combat them This is on top of combat-grade cybernetics and gene-augmentations, vastly improving the user’s combat performance To combat these new threats, a new type of round known as ‘Hypervelocity Rounds’ -or HV and whatever other designation at the end of it like HVAP- have been developed for most small arms In addition to HV rounds, there are rifle-sized lasers as well… Due to advancements in containment technology, plasma has become available as a warhead for missiles and shells, and depending on the containment setup, it can be used to defeat hard or soft targets Vehicular armaments include Electrothermal Chemical Triple Coaxial Plasma Igniter cannon, electro-motive (i.e. rail/coilgun), lasers, and with some groups plasmoid and particle beam weaponry Sol in general is rife with conflict, be between FedCons, Meg-Corps, and/or SolForce This has given birth to a new phrase: “Livable land is rare, but human lives are cheap”

Thread starter Aaron Fox
Start date Jan 3, 2019
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all the inspiration! all the punk setting anno 2070/2205 inspired both pessimistic and optimistic global warming (worst case averted edition) lots of nukes have been used submarine titans inspired

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Aaron Fox

That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

Feb 17, 2019

Hm, something to go with a picture that I've found on Facebook that is prudent for the setting:

"When mankind first came to Mars, it was mostly surveyors of SolForce, the Union of North American States, and several mega corporations, all looking for resources and locations to set up their future colonies. Despite this, the first American colonies on Mars would be located at several NASA probe landing sites including Opportunity and Viking 1. Each and every one of them would have those probes as monuments, the center of these colonies as it were. This was not only a testament to the willingness of humanity to anthropomorphize machines and animals (although the latter became the driving force for the Uplift Process), but also attempting to recreate the future that was..."

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Worldbuilding: A New World, a World of Conflict and Sorrow

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Aaron Fox

That Crazy/Not-Crazy Guy

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