Nigellians in Phaseworld

[taalismn]

Here's my rather thin idea for bringing in the Nigellian Confederation into a Phaseworld setting....though I'm sure I can beef this up with more drama and stats(still WIP)

Nigelllian Confederation For Phaseworld
(Adapted/Extrapolated from The Mechanoid Trilogy)

The New Nigellian Confederation of the Three Galaxies is related to the Nigellian Confederation of the Mechanoid Trilogy because the former is an offshot of the latter; the Three Galaxies Confederation was founded by dimensional castaways who found themselves inadvertantly transported to the Three Galaxies continiuum, with no way to return to their home dimension.
At the time of their transposition, the Nigellian Confederation was in full swing in its efforts to explore and exploit the treasures of the abandoned Mechanoid ‘homeworld’ of their own dimension. To assist in the massive undertaking of exploring, recovering, and protecting the planet they regarded as their own (while supporting the efforts of the resident Cybormen to establish their claim as ‘natives’), the Nigellians and their allies built several massive spacestations in orbit, each the size of a city, to act as orbital transhipment points, warehouses, research laboratories, military bases, training camps for explorers excursing to the surface, and factory complexes for producing necessary weaponry and spare parts. Each station could hold a million plus in residents(mostly transients on the way to, or from, the surface), and had sufficient weaponry and armor to defend both against incursions from outside and to bring powerfful orbital bombardment on the planet below.
It was at one of these giant orbital complexes that Nigellian and Gendo scientists were studying recovered Mechanoid hardware, that an accident occured. The exact nature of the device under study has been lost to Nigellian knowledge, as the artifact self-destructed as it activated, but what few laboratory records remain note the scientists’ speculations that it was some sort of drive mechanism or folded-space containment device. In any event, as the device imploded the laboratory, it also generated a massive folded-space pocket that encompassed the entire platform, its mixed population of various Confederation races, and a large visiting Borealian military contingent that was awaiting docking. The whole mess was hyperjumped through space/time, and ended up in an entirely different galaxy, and, the Nigellians would figure out, possibly an entirely new universe.

Finding themselves adrift in a completely alien region of space, with not the slightest familiar ‘landmarks’ to tell them where they were with regards to their home galaxy, the survivors knew only that they were within a galactic stellar cluster, part of a larger galaxy. Immediately, the various contingents aboard the station began debating what was the best action to take....Some wanted to stay where they were, and attempt to duplicate the accident, in hopes of finding a way back, or attracting rescue from the other orbital stations that must have witnessed their disappearance. Others wanted to begin scouting, looking for better locations on which to establish a refuge. And many of them were quick to attempt to establish themselves as the defacto leaders of the survivors.
In an impressive piece of diplomacy, the Nigellian administrators of the orbital complex were able to argue that the best chances for survival lay in staying together as a political and social entity. Though they might be forever separated from the Nigellian Confederation, the strandees would become a Confederation unto themselves; the base personnel, who represented all the major races of their home nation, and in numbers sufficient to constitute a viable colonial genepool, would be the nucleus of a new Confederation in this distant realm. Together, they would be stronger than the sum of their parts, and should they(or their descendants) ever make contact with the original Confederation again, they could present their kin with a fait accompli; a new arm of their civilization in a new galaxy.
The ploy worked; despite some grumbles, the new Confederation was born. Gathering their resources, the strandees moved to explore their immediate surroundings, quickly finding that the star cluster they found themselves in hosted several habitable worlds and compatible resources. What few neighboring civilizations they could detect were far enough away that that they posed n immediate threat to the newly formed Confederation colonies, at least for awhile, until they could build up their populations and technology base.
Though the new Nigellian Confederation lacked access to all the technology of their home civilization, they did have an excellent cross section of their technologies to use as templates, they had some manufacturing facilities already with them, and they had a wealth of salvaged Mechanoid and Donarii technology to study(although much had been destroyed along with the xenotech laboratory facility in the accident that had brought them here). Furthermore, the population of the orbital station were largely military personnel, support technicians, scientists, and adventurers; people with a superb cross-section of skills for colonization and rebuilding a high-tech civilization.


Demographics:
Population: 18 billion
Nigellians 20%
Borealians 25%
Ostrac 20%
Gendo 15%
Cybormen 1%
Psi-Warpers 2%
Humans 12%
Others 5%

Major Races of the New Nigellian Confederation:

Nigellians---The original founders and administrators of the orbital complex, the Nigellians remain the main force in the NNC’s government. The Nigellians constitute the second-largest population bloc in the Confederation, and their people are found in almost all fields of endeavor, but they concentrate on administration, military, technology, and diplomatic affairs. The Nigellians are most often the Confederation’s face to the rest of the Three Galaxies, brokering ship sales and Borealian military contracts, arranging trade treaties and technology exchanges, as well as scouting, spying, and industrial espionage. The latter actions of acquiring new technoologies from the rest of the Three Galaxies has been of particular importance in the Confederation’s upgrading of its capabilities.

Gendo---The Gendo remain the main technologists. picking and prizing apart the various new alien technologies the Confederation has encountered, and applying it to new generations of Confederation equipment.

Borealians---Effectively freed from being tied to their polluted and overpopulated homeworld, the Borealian contingent almost went into business for themselves, claiming one of the newly discovered worlds for themselves. Fearing what would happen if the Borealians seceded from the Confederation, the Nigellians managed to talk the Borealians back into staying, offering them concessions on resource development. The Borealians have become the primary industrialists of the Confederation, mass-producing the designs of the Nigellians and Gendo, and providing the bulk of the NC’s armed forces(especially the ground forces).
With their high reproductive rate, the Borealians have also become the most numerous species in the Confederation, and some feared that the Borealians might do to their two new worlds what they had with their original homeworld; stripmine it into near-uninhabitability. However, the Borealians have been much more careful with their second chance, confining most of their heavy industry to the second, and less viable, of their worlds, and to asteroid facs. They retain their mandatory military service and technical training requirements of their society, giving them a large base of soldiers and workers.
Despite their avowed loyalty to the Confederation, the Borealians’ early show of independence and their growing population concerns many in the Confederation government, who want tighter reins on Borealian activity, for fear of what might happen if the Borealians should again try to leave them.

Ostrac---These burly amphibians remain the musclemen of the NC, serving as brute labor, heavy infantry, and exploration scouts(where their amphibious nature has proven particularly useful).

Psi-Warpers---A number of Psi-Warpers, mostly newly-freed biological ‘drive components’ from salvaged Mechanoid ships, were aboard the station when it was warped(in fact, some speculated that the activation of the Mechanoid artifact may have triggered a mass-jump reflex by the Pai-Warpers, contributing to the hyper-jump). These refugees have also grown in number along with the rest of the Confederation. Having lost their original culture when their race was assimilated by the Mechanoids, the Psi-Warpers have impressed upon the other Confederation members; taking the others’ culture for their own.

Humans----A relatively small number of Humans(about 5,000) were among those on the NC station when it was warped to the Three Galaxies. The Humans never felt entirely at ‘home’ among the other members of the NC, even in the Before, so when other human civilzations were detected in the Three Galaxies, many left. There are still respectable numbers of Humans living in the Confederation, though, with their opinions fairly evenly divided between petitioning the Confederation Council to join a larger nation-state like the CCW, or remain independent.

Cybormen---A number of Cybormen also came through with the orbital complex, having been aboard to assist and advise the Nigellians. Many of those same Cybormen survive to the present, thanks to their bionic reconstruction, and progressive modification over the centuries. The Cybormen have managed to keep up their numbers through cloning, but the process is difficult and fraught with failure; due to genetic damage done by the Mechanoids’ experimentation, only about 4% of cloning attempts succeed in producing viable offspring. The Cybormen would very much like to acquire technology(or any other means) to increase the chances for success, and, ideally, reverse the damage done them.

Dionii----None of the Mechanoids’ insectoid allies are KNOWN to have crossed over into the Three Galaxies, but several specimens/prisoners were being held captive in a lab adjacent to that where the experimental Mechanoid mechanism was being tested. That facility was obliterated in the explosion, but some accounts of the chaos immediately following the disaster claim to have witnessed a ship, possibly several, escaping from the station UNDER POWER. Confederation folklore has it the Dionii escaped, and may be at large in the Three Galaxies, slowly and secretly building up their numbers until they can again threaten humanoid life as they had in the past.

Mechanoids---The only Mechanoids that came with the strandees were in bits and pieces. Since coming to the Three Galaxies, the Confederation has kept their knowledge of the Mechanoids a secret, and time has relegated the Mechanoids to the status of a long-gone boogieman, lost in Confederation pre-history. Some researchers, however, worry about whether or not the original Mechanoid device was really a multi-dimensional drive....if it was, and it wasn’t a prototype, then the Mechanoids might have used similar devices to escape to other dimensions...

Notable Planets of the New Nigellian Confederation:
Nistar
Nistar was almost the first significant starsystem that the d-stranded Confederates discovered, once they began exploring, and its discovery was taken by many of the more religious as a sign of divine providence. A binary star(yellow dwarf-blue dwarf) system that sported no less than four significantly habitable planets, so akin to the original Nigellian starsystem, that it was immediately dubbed ‘Nistar’.
The original orbital complex the Confederate refugees arrived in has long since been dismantled and scavenged for materials and equipment during the colonization of the Nistar system, but many portions of it still feature as centerpieces of the founding colonies on the new Nigellian Confederation homeworlds.


Nistar-A
New Nigellia---A fertile, temperate, Earth-like world orbiting Nistar-A, New Nigellian was immediately claimed by the Nigellians, though it has also become home to substantial populations of Gendo and Ostroc. New Nigellia has been developed into a wonderfully comfortable, prosperous, and busy planet, of light industry, scientific research, scholarly pursuit, mercantile business, and government work(as it is the defacto capitol of the Confederation).

Vigelas---Gas Giant. Vigelas is used as a fueling station for the large Nigellian commercial fleet, and its moon system provides both mineral resources and training grounds to feed Nigellian industry and military needs.

Nistar-B

New Boreal---A large(1.1 g) planet with cool temperatures, normal terrestrial atmosphere, and balanced hydrosphere, but a near non-existant native biosphere, New Boreal has been developed as the new homeworld of the Borealians. Most of the inhabitants live underground(as they did on their original homeworld), but unlike long-lost Borealus, New Boreal’s industry has mostly been kept to the extensive system of orbital and lunar factories, while the surface is being terraformed and cultivated.

Gedenes---An average-sized terrestrial world, temperate, with a dense atmosphere, and scant water, Gedenes is being developed primarily by Gendo colonists. Most of the colonists live atop the planet’s mountain chains or in large floating aerostats, above the worst of the planet’s dense atmosphere and severe weather, capturing high-altitude water-vapor, and cultivating hydroponics. However, the Gendo have proposed a more radical terraforming program for Gedenes that will make the entire planet as hospitable as New Nigellia, within a matter of a century. The current plan, however, calls for the use(and depletion) of three of the Confederation’s five remaining Mechanoid Power Crystals, something which is facing serious opposition in the Confederation congress.

Nostra---A small, temperate world covered by water(85%), and possessed of a dense biosphere, this planet has been claimed by the Ostroc who find the planet to be just incredible, even though the gravity is rather light(0.9 gs) for their taste.

Byros---Byros is a huge terrestrial-type planet with high gravity(1.9 gs), cool temperatures, desert climate, thin atmosphere, and utterly lifeless. However, it still sports a Cyborman/Boreallian industrial colony, that has just begun to exploit the planet’s vast mineral resources.

Braron---Gas giant. The Boreallians use the planet and its extensive moon system as a giant mining area, fuelling facility, and training area for its armed forces, leading to most of the small moons receiving nicknames as ‘Tank-up’, ‘Live-Fire’, ‘Kill-Zone’, and ‘Dud-Pit’.

Malycon---Gas Giant. A Uranus-like ‘cold’ gas giant, Malycon has become the focus of recent attention from the scientific authorities of the NNC, after deep probes found traces of organic chemistry, possible signs of life, deep in the planet’s cold, dark, chemical oceans. Currently, several squadrons of specially adapted spacecraft/submarines are plumbing the planet’s depths looking for anything of interest.


Beyond its home systems, the New Nigellian Confederation also lays claim to at least three habitable planets(though they have as yet only established small research outposts on them), five ‘desert’ systems containing rocky bodies(but no habitable worlds), and has claimed a ‘protectorate’ in effect over two additional habitable planets with pre-space travel sentient species.

[taalismn]

Military:
The New Nigellian Confederation maintains a strong military whose organization dates back to the days when the force was a paramilitary taskforce charged with exploring a dangerous world, and containing a race of genocidal cyborgs. The NNC retains a strong degree of paranoia, and thus all able-bodied adults are expected to serve some time training and practicing with their planetary militias and civil defense organizations. Fronting the planetary militias is a standing professional army that maintains the surface military installations, orbital defenses, and serves Marine duty with the Fleets. The Fleets in turn maintain orbital and extrasolar patrols.
The NNC tries to maintain a combined arms approach, with teams of all the major species in the NNC serving in the same units. The exceptions to this policy are the Nigellian commando units, and the Borealians, who maintain the bulk of their armed forces as a separate formations(especially when conducting mercenary operations).
Overall, the NNC has a powerful ground force, and both the Nigellian and Borealian military components have accumulated considerable experience in facing opponents from outside Confederation space. Their space forces, however, are relatively weak, with the bulk of their space warcraft consisting of mercantile cruisers and fighters.

Technologies:
The Confederation’s technology reflects their loss. They have made the transition to more modern megadamage technologies fairly easily, as they had the fabrication facilities for armor and small arms aboard their space station, and modifying personal body armor was fairly simple. Recent improvements to the EBA-series of armors favored by the Nigellians, Ostrac, and Gendo have included the addition of light powered exoskeletons and additional sensor and power systems, effectively converting them into light power armors.
Their field weaponry technology, especially in lasers and particle beams, are very advanced, with the infantry weaponry issued to the Confederation’s troops enjoying especially long range. Thanks to studies of Mechanoid weaponry, the Confederation also enjoys advances in plasma weaponry and smaller-scale particle beam projectors.
However, the Confederation is lacking in railgun and missile technologies...largely due to preference. The NC military prefers direct fire energy weapons to projectile types, while reserving missile technologies for long range ordnance delivery. Their aerospace forces, on the other hand, have long used ‘smart’ weapons such as Cruise Missiles and long range missiles. The current generation of IRLMs(Intelligent Long Range Missiles)can be considered equivalent to Naruni Enterprises’ series in capabilities, though missiles used by the aerospace forces tend to carry tac-nuke plasma warheads. Only relatively recently have the ground forces begun adopting conventional missile ‘artillery’ and IRLMs to ground vehicles.
With regard to larger equipment, such as vehicles and spacecraft, the Confederation is at a bit of a setback. Primarily, the Confederation has relied on various modified versions of tried and true designs that one would recognize as being direct descendents of the craft they originally came to the Three Galaxies. Not for lack of imagination, but simply because it was expedient for them to do so, the Confederation simply kept recycling the same old designs as they still worked for their needs. The changing situation in the Three Galaxies and the looming presence of the other powers has the Confederation now scrambling to diversify their vehicle stable with newer designs.
Minimal work has been done on cybernetics and bionics, beyond basic replacement prosthetics. The majority of the New Nigellian Confederation, having seen the effects of extreme cyborgization in the Cybormen, have shied away from the idea of personal augmentation via cybernetics and bionics, and thus the science has remained a Cyborman monopoly. However, the knowledge of cybenetic enhancement as practiced in the Three Galaxies has begun to trickle into the NNC, and has begun to renew controversy. The Nigellians have sought to impose bans on cybenetic and bionic experimentation and importation in the NNC, while reserving certain implant technologies for their covert actions and grey-ops teams. This is cauing friction with the Borealians, who would like to see a more widespread and overt program of bionic augmentation for their own troops.
In parallel to the arguments raging over the issue of cybernetics and bionics, the NCC has also been attempting to match the Three Galaxies in power armor and robot design. The Nigellians, Gendo. and Ostrac have deployed light exoskeletal armors with their infantry for several generations, and newer generation heavier exoframes are being offered as an alternative to bionic augmentation. Robot design is less advanced, with the bulk of the NNC’s robots being quadraped models based on old Terran designs, and mostly used for rough terrain utility and exploration work. However, the Gendo have recently announced that they have been working on several combat robot designs of great promise( though one observer claims several of the new designs seem to be scaled-up versions of old Mechanoid configurations).

Meeting the Three Galaxies:
More advanced technologically, and more organized, than the other star-nations of the region, the four species that make up the Confederation have become the superpower of their particular corner of the cosmos. This status qou has held for several centuries, during which the Confederation has built up its numbers and established itself.
However, upon coming into contact with the predominate superpowers of the rest of the Three Galaxies, the Confederation’s technological and military muscle has been shown to be lacking in many respects; while their ground weaponry and armor is the equal(and in some cases surpasses that) of most any other major nation, their space arm has been found to be undergunned.
The Confederation hasn’t come as far as it has by folding at the first sign of trouble, however, and the Nigellians have taken up the challenge. The Confederation has embarked on a large-scale modernization program to bring their fleets up to Galactic standards, incorporating new technologies that they have bought, stolen, or otherwise acquired. Some of these new technologies have outside analysts puzzled, though; they have no idea where the Nigellians could have gotten them, and the concensus is the Confederation didn’t develop some of these technologies on their own.

In using many of their older designs, upgraded to more modern technologies, the Confederation has made the transition easier for their people, and kept their own industrial economy strong(by relying on native designs, rather than slavishly copy/replicate foreign designs, or buy from outside the Confederation). The retaining of old designs has also worked in the Confederation’s favor on several occasions; ships have been attacked on the assumption that they were older, less capable, craft, only to reveal to the startled attackers that they are really 2nd- or 3rd-generation vessels with the more advanced technologies.

The Confederation still has a great deal of stockpiled Mechanoid technology that survived the transit to the Three Galaxies. Much of the technology still continues to elude and baffle the Confederation researchers studying it, but a few significant advances in Confederation technology can be attributed to continued study of these relics. The Mechanoid tech is considered by most to be the Confederation’s ace in the hole that they have not revealed to anyone else outside the star-nation, and work on uncovering its secrets in hopes of coming up with something that will insure the Confederation’s prosperity and security in the face of the looming threat of the Three Galaxies’ larger powers.


Relations with Others:
The New Nigellian Confederation is still a relative unknown to the rest of the Three Galaxies, and for their part, the NNC knows a little bit more about the rest of the cosmos, courtesy of Nigellian intelligence-gathering. Mostly, however, the Confederation is used to dealing with(and in some cases bullying) the local smaller independent systems in their immediate vicinity.

CCW----After the local indies, the CCW is the outside power the NNC has the most dealings with. The Confederation finds the CCW large, overbearing, pompous, arrogantly idealistic, and needlessly meddling in the affairs of business and free trade(i.e., they impose trade tariffs, restrict traffic in goods, and crack down on piracy, smuggling, and gun-running). On the plus side, the CCW IS so large, overbearing, pompous, arrogantly idealistic, needlessly meddling, and WEALTHY, that NNC merchants find ready markets for their wares and can operate relatively openly in CCW territories. The NNC would most likely pursue an alliance with the CCW, but it would have to be carefully worded and on the Nigellians’ terms, and NNC sovereignty and control of their own space would be top of the small print.

TGE--The TransGalactic Empire scares the New Nigellian Confederation something bad; someone that big and bad could roll right over the tiny NNC without noticing. Worse yet, the threat of takeover by the TGE would force the Nigellian star-nation to have to pick a side, like appeaing to the CCW or the UWW, giving up their sovereignty and fiercely-held independence in return for survival, and no garuantee that their protectors would let them go once the threat had passed.

United Worlds of Warlock---Magic is just such an obscure notion to the Nigellians that most in the Confederation are CERTAIN that what they’re seeing is really some sort of technology at work. Being unable to buy or steal that technology makes the NNC leery and respectful of the UWW, and they just don’t know how to proceed in any future dealings with them.

Naruni Enterprises----The Naruni would LOVE to get ahold of the unique Nigellian technologies and control them, once they find out about them, pick up the Gendo as new weapons techs, and the Borealians and Ostroc as janissary-troopers. The Nigellians know of Naruni as galactic arms merchants, but aren’t quite aware of the threat the Naruni really pose to small powers like the NNC. Under ideal conditions, the Nigellians might easily become middlemen for the Naruni, much like the Uteni(although at a lower level), but the rest of the Confederation would likely suffer in any such deal, being subordinated to the demands of NE.

Hartigal Combine----Dealing with the NE offshoot that is Hartigal seems like a safer proposition to the Nigellian Confederation(like Naruni, Hartigal would LOVE access to proprietary Confederation technologies, but would let the NNC preserve their sovereignty), but again, the NNC is likely to underestimate the response to any such alliance, on the part of Naruni Enterprises.

Altess Dynasty----The Nigellians are in awe of Altess wealth, but they don’t quite know what to make of them. The Altess, on the other hand, don’t seem to be aware of the NNC, or may be ignoring them as yet another minor power bloc that has little or no impact on their business, yet.

Central Alliance--- Ambigious. The Confederation learned early on that there was a market for cheap commercial spacecraft in the Central Alliance, and the Nigellian and Boreallian shipyards have been gearing up to make a big pitch to Noldek and his administrators to let them sell cargo and utility ships to the Alliance at a good price. However, the Borealian Armed Mercantile Association(their mercenary bonding agency) has some doubts, given that Central Alliance cybor-mercs have offered stiff competition for jobs that the Boreallians are also bidding on. For obvious reasons, the Cybormen are in favor of closer ties with the Central Alliance, since their cyborg nature allows them instant status when travelling in the Central Alliance.

CosmoKnights---The peoples of the NNC have never encountered anything like the CosmoKnights, or their equivalent, in their home universe, and the NNC is uncertain what to make of the stories they’ve heard. Most NNC citizens actually DISbelieve the CosmoKnights really exist, and that reports of them are just a big practical joke, or brain fuzz.