Tuesday, October 4, 2011

RS Setting? Rogue Space 2440

A few years ago I pitched a simple to play tactical squad based sci-fi war game to a company.  I had art commissioned from the talented Dario Corallo who does a lot of the Dark City Games counters.  The image is 4 of the main figures from the game.

The game (I still think) kicks ass and takes names, but I am thinking maybe it would make a good, if generic, background setting for Rogue Space.  Below is the background setting pitch for my original war game, let me know what you think about this becoming the default Rogue Space setting...

Rogue Space 2440   a History
Humanity expanded beyond the boundaries of Earth, colonizing and eventually terra-forming Mars.  It was expensive and dangerous work.  Many died in the efforts and an alternative to this process had to be found.

In response to the risk and expense of sending manned missions into space, humanity created the Robota to do this work.  Into space the Robota were sent seeking new worlds with the raw materials needed to build humans homes amongst the stars.  When profitable worlds were found, ships called ARCS (Automated Robota Colonization Ship) were launched.  The ARCS were equipped to build mines, farms, and to start terra-forming the world for a new human colony. ARCS became a factory building the thousands of Robota necessary to make the planet capable of supporting humans.

Eventually humanity found that some new worlds were only new to them. They were not alone.  Robota survey teams discovered two unique insect like races had grown and established their own claims to the universe. 

The first contact was with a hive building race humans called the Brood.  It is a race that survives by infestation, swarming, and by rapid reproduction.  A hive would turn a world into food and a habitat necessary to support it. When that world was completely infested they, like humans, sought a new world and made it into a new home. Like a disease the brood spread slowly in the universe.  It might have taken millennia before humans and brood ever met.  Except, programming required the Robota to send specimens back of any life forms they discovered.  The Robota did their duty, collecting live specimens and sending ARCS back carrying the Brood to all known colonized worlds.  The Brood found the Robota made a suitable food source during the voyages back to human colonized worlds.  When ARCS opened on a human colonized world, a species not seen before swarmed into a new world and found a new host on which to feed and grow: humanity.

The Robota did not only discover the Brood.  An ant like race, the Tura, grew quickly in their own part of the universe.  Unlike humanity, they worked in harmony for the greater good of their own race.  When the Brood began infesting their worlds, the Tura learned to defend their race.  When the Robota landed on Tura worlds and took them as specimens, they learned a lesson only humanity could teach.  They learned to go to war.

Following ARCS back to human occupied planets, the Tura began a war against mankind.  To the Tura, humanity is a new and deadlier infestation than the Brood, and they must be stopped at all costs.

Humanity finding it was in a hostile universe supplied its creation, the Robota, with the means to defend him.  He provided them weapons, and created new units to fight and defend humanity.  For a time the Robota fought for humanity.  They began replicating weapon armed units on worlds across the universe. Robota stood against the brood and the Tura as they attacked more human colonized planets.  Slowly the Robota pushed back the enemies of humanity securing the frontiers of human space.

The success of the Robota was a time of relief for the beleaguered human colonies.  Then humanities own creation turned against him as well.  Some say it was the effects of radiation, others said the effects of strange planetary conditions, maybe a computer virus, or possibly it was the work of the Tura.  Some say man sowed the seeds of his own destruction by creating a race of servants who waited patiently for the tools to free themselves and become the new masters.  Whatever the cause, humanities greatest ally and defender in the universe became its deadliest foe.

The Robota now war against all organics.  With binary code as their philosophy, they give the organics a simple choice. This choice is the soul of all Robota programming, 1 or 0, something or nothing, serve or die. 

With nowhere else to turn, humanity must once again depend on itself.  A small elite force now fights to defend all of humanity, the Marines.  All the hope for human existence rests upon those chosen for the Corps.  It rests upon the shoulders of those who can never fail, never take one step back, and can never rest until victory is won for all of humanity.

Now war rages across worlds scattered through space. Every battle brings one side a step closer to victory and the other side, one step closer to extermination. 

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