Remnants of the Earth

COMMUNITY => General Discussion => Topic started by: Argroww on May 14, 2017, 12:54:24 pm

Title: Introducing The Wolvaris
Post by: Argroww on May 14, 2017, 12:54:24 pm
Hello everyone!....The purpose of this post is to bring in something that I'd like to do here, but it's a big thing so I'd like to give people a chance to think about it and discuss with me before I go blundering in.  There still more details for me to write up, but if people like what I am offering below I'd like it to be a forum wide event, a bit of me bringing my own forum here.  So read below to get an idea of what The Wolvaris is, constructive comments are welcome and I know I need more detail in places, but I also would like to know if the members here would welcome something that will require its own subthread...

What is The Wolvaris?
The Wolvaris is essentially a gigantic theoretical project made real. At its core is the Star-Fold drive and supporting equipment, however the drive is so large that it is in fact larger than The Union's largest starship and requires more power to function. Due to this immense size it was decided by the Union's engineers that it would be easier to hollow out a metal rich asteroid of suitable size and ensure that the Asteroid's own structure became the supporting structure for the drive. This activity lead to the asteroid becoming a hive for all involved with the drive and their own families, the nature of the project attracted other interested parties as well not only for it's protection, but to support the growing community around the drive itself.

At the time the most suitable asteroid was one large enough to earn a name and hence the naming of the ship itself. Asteroid Wolvaris was discovered by a Wolvian spirit-crafter early in The Worlde's history before it was space-ready as the Wolvian created a device that allowed observatories to see further out into space using the spiritual energy of the observer. As the focus was placed upon the asteroid belt one particular asteroid stood out for its considerable size and thus it was names Wolvaris in honour of the Wolvian. It wasn't for another thousand years before the asteroid became anything other than the gigantic piece of rock it appeared to be.

The Star-Fold drive
Before the true nature of the Nebulous Galaxy was discovered by the denizens of The Worlde the scientists occupied themselves with making travel to other stars easy, the journey was perceived to take much longer than was practical for any journey through space beyond the most distant planet in their own star system and they sought to make it possible for the trip to take mere weeks rather than years. Due to magi-tech they were able to harness the unique radiation signal of their own star and "latch" onto another star thus create two absolute reference points, a start and an end. The powerful computing system within the drive would use various identifiers to locate the stars satellites and calculate an exit point that was safe for the drive (and surrounding asteroid) to emerge at and then use it's immense series of Theay-Nor reactors to create a one-way worm-hole which would "swallow" the Wolvaris and it would emerge at the other end.

The amount of power the drive needs means that after the fold has occurred it would take several weeks for the reactors to charge back up again, knowing this the engineering team added a second set of reactors to power the asteroid itself ensuring the two systems were separate, but the asteroid could use the the drive's reactors as emergency backup, but not the other way round.

The development of The Wolvaris
Asteroid Wolvaris started off as a long roughly oval shaped metal rich asteroid and like most asteroids was heavily pitted and going through a slow spin from what-ever event caused its formation and the following impacts throughout it's life-span. It was otherwise moving through a slow orbit around the Telorthus star, further out than The Worlde. The start of the project involved stabilising the orbit and stopping its spin.

The asteroid went through multiple stages of development, each stage taking it further and further away from being a standard asteroid and closer to being the colony ship it ended up as. The early stages involved boring a hole into the center of the asteroid large enough to take the drive itself. Further space was then created for the supporting systems for the drive its power and computational systems. The asteroid was harvested from the inside outwards in order to construct the drive and towards the end of the first phase it became a mere shell with a fully functional Star-Fold drive and 200 large Theay-Nor reactors at it's rear end, the fore end of the asteroid held the immense computing array and habitation for the engineers, scientists and other supporting staff for the drive and it's sytems. However at this point the starship was far from being self-sufficient with anything bar power, all life support was transported from the nearest starbase and regularly re-supplied.

It was soon realised that the Wolvaris asteroid on it's own had only barely given space and resource for the drive itself and the search was made for more metal-rich asteroids to try an make the starship self-sustaining a considerable feat in itself as the production of food, water and air would require significant efforts. The asteroid belt was scoured and suitable rocks located, each was propelled by specially retrofitted Clippers to the location of The Wolvaris and then ripped apart for their crucial resources. Curiously it was the habitation module that was build first starting with an immense ring around the star-fold drive connected by several columns. The columns themselves so thick that they were capable of housing people themselves.

At the end of the columns a large tube was formed to encapsulate the star-fold drive and on the inner side platforms were prepared designed to allow for farmlands and lakes and various other features that would create an internal life-support system to replicate the surface of a planet. On the outer side of the tube graviton generators were added that would create the pull of gravity on the inner side and the outside surface of the star-fold drive was coated with a lighting system that created the illusion of a sun. Although at this point it merely lit up the very dull looking metallic interior and all of the power was coming from the star-fold drives own reactors.

Before the residential zone was further completed space docks were added along either side of the tube and an outer hull was added in preparation for later development, the space docks initially intended for further supplies, but later kept to allow for the smaller star ships that would accompany The Wolvaris on it's voyage.

To the rear of the mostly empty tube the 200 additional Theay-Nor reactors were added and the 14 hyper-ion thrust modules. It was decided that due to the clear size of The Wolvaris that it would not move quickly in local space, relying on the smaller ships it was due to store for exploration of nearby spacial objects and it's own immense size for protection against threats. Around the additional Theay-Nor reactor further habitation was built, although these specialised for research and study and around that military installations were added along with a ring dedicated to The Seeker's Guild.

It was around here that the potential of the starship as a colony ship was seriously considered as multiple professions added their piece to a starship that was still far from being ready. The front of the ship was given 12 hangars not only large enough to store a Clipper, but to build and refit them too with the center of the ring dedicated to manufacture of not just starship parts, but all kinds of manufacturing processes and the very front became the main command module, although due to its size there were multiple command backup modules running throughout The Wolvaris.

With the residential zone now enclosed the difficult process of making it self-sustaining started. Various minerals were farmed for the nearby asteroids and turned into soil, ice rice asteroids were equally farmed to provide water and over the course of several month the well-lit interior steadily transformed from the silvery-grey to a lush internal environment that even had it's own weather system. This was of course aided by magi-tech controlling how the clouds and rain went as well as adding the illusion of a blue sky above instead of the opposite side of the tube which was initially found to be quite disconcerting, even so the curve of tube for those unused to it suddenly hazing into a 'horizon' for some was peculiar.

As the residential zone was stabilised and the first families and crew started moving in the final works were done to the outer hull to make it as durable and defendable as possible becoming a veritable fortress bristling with launch bays for Ortica fighters, smaller weapon turrets and larger capital-ship turrets and a large array of variable shield generators.

Once the mechanical work was completed all that was left was to bring the population on board, initially being purely operational and military staff and then their families, shortly after that support staff followed to populate shops, hospitals and a variety of other institutions. Over several months the population grew to roughly half of it's capacity and The Union council readied themselves for the first test of the star-fold drive deciding that 2 million was enough to appropriately populate The Wolvaris and for it to keep going should it be unable to return to Telorthus space.

After completion

It was mere weeks before the fated test 'launch' when an alien from another star system, a being known as Cy Una Rem stumbled into the star system in a ship that was heavily damaged and thus easily captured and taken to the distant outpost on Telorthus 7. A study of its navigation system revealed a fatal flaw in their understanding of the surrounding space, the stars they could see were an illusion and beyond the ice-sphere was a nebula that would disrupt the navigation of any ship not correctly configured to compensate. This explained the loss of a couple of scout vessels sent out beyond the ice-sphere that surrounded their star system. It was also revealed that the nebula was made of a similar energy type as the dimension that the Daemons came from.

Cy Una Rem's starship gave The Union a terrible shock, they couldn't use The Wolvaris because they could not correctly target the destination star, to launch The Wolvaris would result in the loss of over 2 million people and thus the Star-Fold project was shut down, The Wolvaris becoming little more than a holiday location for some and a continued job for others, the population dwindled back down to roughly 1 million, mostly operational staff and their families.

This way it stayed for several years as the newer more practical Wolf-Star class scout ships were developed. Whilst much smaller than even the Clippers these ships were designed to be able to navigate the nebula and explore other star systems. Those that were unpopulated, but found to hold valuable resources were "claimed" via special Nav-Bouys that would allow the new Void-Drives to easily lock onto and travel to these other star systems and newer starships much smaller than The Wolvaris and more practical were developed and used to mine or colonise new places.

The Wolvaris steadily gained popularity again, it's population swelling as much from the people who lived on it as from visitors who decided to stay, whilst the reason for this was unclear it proved useful to make the Wolvaris ready for a new plan revealed entirely by accident.

However the prototype Wolf-Star upon getting caught in a very hostile star system suddenly disappeared during a fire-fight with an unknown enemy, believed to have initiated an emergency jump the various agencies involved in tracking Union starships couldn't find it, The Wolvaris however did find it. The computational systems designed for locking onto the destination star had been re-coded to be able to lock onto the Nav-Bouys used by the Wolf-Stars and almost instantly after The Iron Claw vanished the Star-Fold drive detected a single target star...but not in the local galaxy. The computer systems reported that the star was so distant that measurements revealed it to be outside of their own galaxy, a distance not even considered when the Star-Fold drive had been built and yet the computer system reported the Star-Fold was possible and preparations were begun as where-ever The Iron Claw was, it wouldn't be getting back.
Title: Re: Introducing The Wolvaris
Post by: Rowan on May 14, 2017, 09:53:48 pm
Hey you,

Being well versed in this storyline but elsewhere, I would love to see it transferred here with the hope that others would write and join in, further expanding it. I would support you on this thread and hope others would do the same.
Title: Re: Introducing The Wolvaris
Post by: Argroww on May 20, 2017, 02:31:27 pm
Races

Humans

The humans on board The Wolvaris are much like ourselves, skin colour ranges greatly due to the use of prosthetics that can artificially adjust the skin tone, this also applies to hair colour and other features. Humans range from being as short as 4 feet to as tall at 7 with a variety of physical builds inbetween and it has been known for a human to live as old as 120 with decent health-care and longer through magi-tech enhancements, however the crucial part of the species in this case is the brain and even with magical enhancements the human brain rarely copes beyond 150 years unless the human is of mixed race from a longer lived species. Humans are capable of handling a wide variety of careers and professions and can in some case shows skills for natural magic affinity although it is not common. The human breeding cycle is considered prolific by most species which has given rise to the slang "breeding like humans", most humans point out that rabbits are worse.

Dwarves
Dwarves are one of the longer lived species and they usually live up to 500 years and often longer till around 750 years. Given their long life-span they mature much quicker than Elves reaching physical and mental maturity between 20-30 years and remaining in good physical condition for much of the rest of their lives as long as they look after themselves, their final years rarely come as a surprise as their bodies rapidly fade in their last 5-10 years. Most races can often find Dwarves difficult to interact with as both the males and females proudly sport beards and enjoy wearing heavy armour that reveals little of their figure when they are in public, usually to help with identification a male will braid their beard and a female will leave it loose or will braid her hair instead. Dwarves very rarely get any higher than 5 feet in height and always have a stocky build, they have immense stamina being able to walk all day wearing heavy plate armour and still be able to enter battle afterwards, however running is often beyond them. Dwarves have a great love of anything metal and of pretty much anything that can be eaten, they've also been known to enjoy tinkering. These interests lead them well into mining, manufacturing of metal based goods and chefs, they also often make reliable guards. Due to their longer life-spans Dwarven breeding is slower than humans, whilst they procreate as often as humans do this rarely results in offspring and a child may be born to a couple as rarely as once every 10 years, often longer, as a race the Dwarves have felt no need to find out why the birth rate is so low, due to the recent lack of wars there's plenty of them to go about!

Elves
Race Types: Golden Elves/Grey Elves/Sylvian Elves

The Elvish race is one of the oldest surviving on the Worlde, like the Dwarves they are longer lived than Humans but much more so. An Elf can often live longer than a thousand years although they take longer than dwarves to mature with an Elf of 50 or still under 100 usually still being considered as a child. Also like dwarves the Elven people also have a very low birth rate but perhaps even worse with a child being born to a couple perhaps only once in a 100 years, there are however more likely to be exceptions amongst the Elven people with twins or triplets being relatively common. Identical siblings however have been extremely rare.

Elves are split into four main racial groups which are as follows:-

Golden Elves: Once known as the ‘High Elves’, they are generally charactised by the fair skin and their blonde, almost golden hair. They ususally have golden colouring to their eyes too. Golden elves are tall and very slender in their build. They mainly keep to themselves and are not fond of interacting with other species. They were actively involved in the spellcasting that saw the downfall of the Dark Underlord during the second rising. Whilst not as powerful as they once were the Golden Elves still are the most potent users of magick as it seems to gravitate more naturally to them than most. The Golden Elves keep their own centres for research and like to study history and geneacology due to their longevity of life and interest in bloodlines. They have also been known to be involved in the study of certain magickal strains that seem to be less prevalent in the worlde since the imprisonment of the Dark Underlord.

Grey Elves: Also known as the ‘Moon Elves’ they are generally know as such because of their very pale skin and silvery white hair and varying shades of blue to grey eye colouring. Unlike their cousins the Golden Elves, they are much more tolerant of other species and are happy involving themselves in the affairs of the Worlde. They are not as tall and willow as their cousins the Gold and Sylvan Elves and tend to be somewhat more built like Umans. They gravitate towards roles as mediators and politicians because of their desire to interact. The Grey Elves do not take any issue in procreating with other species and many have taken partners from other races and intermingled the elvish bloodlines. They do not tend to use magick very much anymore and have become curious about the more modern aspects of the Worlde about them.

Sylvian Elves: Like the Golden Elves they tend to be tall and willowy and athletic in their build as they spend most of their time outside among the remaining areas of nature in the Worlde. Their colouring varies, almost chameleon like as they tend to blend in with the very nature about them. They are quiet and secretive and very suspicious of outsiders. They like to tend the trees and foliage and look after the wild animals in the Worlde, happy to be in small groups or very solitary. The Sylvians like to use natural remedies and gentle magicks to affect the environment about them. They have generally become less versed in using what magick is left and only tend to use it in emergencies if they need to. They tend to shun large cities and crowds preferring the quiet of nature. It has been known for the odd Sylvan to work in hydroponics on space vessels, they tend to make the best gardeners and agriculturalists.

Dark Elves: In the days of the Dark Underlord this branch of the Elven people leaned towards being considered evil, they didn't just remain aloof from the the other races, they sought to exterminate any who were not Elves. Since the fall of the Dark Underlord they have mellowed somewhat, whilst still a very aggressive branch of the Elven people they no longer hold to their racial elitism and in many ways have perhaps embraced interactions with other people more than their Golden or Sylvian brethren. Dark Elves often take on roles that allow them to use their aggressiveness well, be it policing or military roles.

Wolvians

The Wolvian people out of all of those from The Union colony ship are perhaps the most curious for they tend to shun technology as much as is possible for a race that still travels amongst the stars with other races. Like Humans they have a relatively short natural life-span and they age somewhat similarly as well going through youth, teenage years, adult maturity and finally old age. However the average Wolvian tends to stay very fit and capable all the way till their last days. Due to their preference of shunning both magical and technological methods of extending age their upper limit is between 90 to 100 years.

The Wolvian people split into 2 branches, the core branch and the Galvomore Wolvian (named for the city in which the breed were discovered). Wolvians resemble wolfmen, their heads are extremely canine with pointed ears at the top of their heads and a lot of fur that cover their whole bodies, most prefer not to wear clothing and if they do it's usually for a practical reason (to store things they wish to carry).

Wolvian males tend to be larger than the females both in height and build with some males being over 8 feet. The females often reach 7 feet and both genders are always larger than the average human. All Wolvians have larger upper bodies and athletic legs and are capable of running on all four limbs or just their legs and can run as fast as a horse for a longer period of time. Whilst there is a size difference between males and females they do not place much significance on this as a society and males and females hold equal position, the only time this comes into question is when a female is in heat at which time it's usually best to avoid the female or any nearby males as their procreation can be quite savage. If a female does not have a male of her own race nearby she will take a male of another race and vice-versa, unfortunately the members of the other races often do not survive such encounters and due to this a female Wolvian will either remain in her room during her heat time or will take medication to ensure it doesn't happen. All the rest of the time neither gender has any sexual interest.

The core branch consists of traditional Wolvians who are unable to master any magic at all and generally have little interest in mastering any creative skill aside from storytelling which has been their primary method of teaching for their entire history. What they do have as well as their natural speed and strength are a number of specialised powers, 3 of which are very specific and the other is rarer and quite powerful. The first three are Fleetfoot - The Wolvian can move at a supernatural speed, their bodies automatically protected from the affects such speed may have however there are risks such as misjudging distance and running off a cliff or into a solid object that is hard enough for the speed protection to insufficient. Stoneskin - The Wolvian can harden their skin to the point of near invincibility, the danger here is that if maintaining the power for too long the WOlvian may end up harding their internal organs and thus turning themselves into a statue. GhostWalker - These Wolvians can enter the realm of the dead to make themselves truly invisible, neither magic not technology is capable of seeing them, although those attuned to the spirit world may be able to see or sense them. Such Wolvians do occasionally get stuck and in their spirit form they cannot eat or drink and thus will eventually become actual ghosts. The final power is that of the SpiritMaster and these Wolvians possess a lot of power and responsibility as their abilities allow them to directly read and manipulate the spirits of others to a variety of effects, however all of these powers are considered gifts from their Goddess and not to be abused.

The Core branch generally go towards very physical professions, policing or military roles.

Galvomore Wolvians are a very different breed, they tend to be a little smaller, have lost their spirit powers, are unable to run on all fours and have more human-like hands. They are also distinguished by their stripy fur. These Wolvians are also considered more civilised as they prefer living in cities and are creative, in fact some of them have the ability to imbue objects with Wolvian powers which they are unable to use themselves, but others can to mimic the powers of the core Wolvians.

Felthriir

These cat-like humanoids are the only race that are part of The Union that are known to be alien to the Telorthus star system. Whilst a dig cannot be performed a deep surface scan of a holy site has revealed the remains of an ancient starship that was clearly capable of Void travel and had enough of a population to allow the survivors to keep their race going, due to this the Felthriir people have been unable to master any natural magic, although they are able to use scrolls and artifacts as well as anyone else.

The Felthriir resemble cats in the same way as Wolvians resemble wolves however they are shorter and leaner typically averaging at around 6 feet and in healthy condition maintaining an athletic figure. Unlike Wolvians however they do prefer to be "civilised" and will dress in clothing and maintain homes and carry out a variety of other activities that make them little different to Humans. The similarities end with the fact that they are naturally faster and live longer usually managing a 200 year average in age, their birth-rate is also much slower than Humans, typically having children every 15 to 20 years, however they always have a batch of children with at least 4 to 5 babies being born from a mother.

Within their own society they hold to a matriarchal leadership, however as part of the Union the agree to follow the general ruling of the Council. As such females are held in higher regard not just in their own species, but in other species too. Although like many races they are equally confused on gender with Dwarves.

Lamariss

Like the Dark Elves the Lamariss have a murky past as they were willing servants of the evil entity during both of its reigns over The Worlde, the Lamariss eventually stopped with their aggressive ways as advanced technology started to appear, machines and computers somehow quelled their aggression. They are lizard-like with green scaled skin and heads that resemble crocodiles with just as many teeth, standing at full height they are on average 8 foot however they usually hunch themselves into roughly 6 feet.

Lamariss possess remarkable regeneration capabilities and almost anything short of their head being chopped off or major organ injuries can usually be recovered from. Almost contrary to this ability the Lamariss have an extreme addiction to prosthetics, so much so that they are at the fore-front of prosthetic technology both from developing the items for others and for themselves in such a way that does not interfere with natural healing processes.

Lamariss aging is difficult to understand, their life-span is anything from 50 years to 400 years without any real idea as to why there is such a large discrepancy as their healing ability makes them immune to many diseases. Their mating habits are somewhat similar to Wolvians in that a female must be in season to mate, however when a female is in season other races are not under threat, instead the female will find the nearest area of deep water and lay soft eggs, several males will then fertilise the eggs at which point they will harden and be taken to the surface and hidden until they hatch the true father usually unknown. Unlike other races young Lamariss are not vulnerable and are usually capable of many of the activites of their adult counter-parts almost immediately...aside from their diminutive size.

Dryads

Dryads are a form of genderless sentient elemental spirits, they also come under other names, Nymphs, Naiads and a few others but commonly prefer Dryad. Dryads have no known age limit, however when they die they leave no trace of themselves making it difficult to know how old they were when they died, or even if they died.

For a long time it was popularly believed that Dyrads were female, however this was a form they took on to protect their homes by deceiving the males of various races as the females of those races tended not to be a threat. However what was true is they they had strong ties to what-ever it is they called home, a tree, a river or stream, a hill or mound (usually with valuable minerals in) and the destruction of such places lead to the death of the connected elemental spirit.

With the arrival of Technomagery much of this changed, elemental spirits were able to separated themselves from their home location and in some cases even survive it's destruction, although The Union made efforts to protect the known locations of Dryads.

This then lead to Dryads changing and spending time in places that they were not normally seen and even male or androgynous forms making appearances, their skin usually mimics their 'home' object, so if a tree their skin will be green or brown, if they latched onto a river then they are likely to be blue.
Title: Re: Introducing The Wolvaris
Post by: Catalina on May 21, 2017, 06:59:05 pm
I can see lots of lore and great stories and maybe events pertaining to this :) I am still offering Alkio at tribute also XD just need to update a few things on him then he should be good. Before I do I have a quick question:

Do they allow something like a shoulder chicken(they have no offical names yet) but they are fluffy frathered wyvern/dragon like creature and maybe something else Im working on? XD since I have an idea of them being used for like security on the ship or something like that :3
Title: Re: Introducing The Wolvaris
Post by: Argroww on May 29, 2017, 01:01:57 pm
Whoops, responded on Discord, but should respond here too.  Yes pets would be allows on The Wolvaris, they'd probably need to be licensed and tagged though.
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