02:13 pm - Jihad Universe 4 - revision notes part 2
And here we go again, because I cannot leave well enough alone.
In Part 1 I rambled at length about the bare-bones of the JU4 setting and what that was supposed to mean. In this installment I continue to ramble, and hopefully actually start to get somewhere resembling an interesting setting.
The Catastrophe
For the JU4 notes I pretty much took the scenario from "I Feel Fine" verbatim and pasted the Jihad into it. The scenario starts (OMG SPOILERS!) a couple thousand years ago a race of aliens had a starship of their run away at a very high percentage of the speed of light. Eventually, they figured out that it was going to hit our sun and cause all sorts of havoc, and since they couldn't stop the damned thing from crashing, they decided to evacuate us. Which they did, terraforming new planets for us to live on, taking small parts of the population away to help settle some of them, and then once the starship was fifty years out from Earth start moving the bulk of the population offworld.
I like this scenario. I *still* like this scenario, even on going back and reconsidering things. The problem here is that this minimalizes the Jihad's influence on world affairs, which could work but it would be difficult to pull off in a shared-world or roleplaying context. (This is also part of the reason why I wanted JU4 to be a far future setting; by bringing things back to a stable status quo, we can have the Jihad be a greater influence than they would in the chaos of the evacuation.)![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
fb has suggested that the Enemy be responsible for the catastrophe and the Jihad the prime mover behind the evacuation. This has a certain appeal, and at the very least the Jihad (being the Heroic Conspiracy) should have a greater role in the evacuation than just running around freaking like the rest of the mundanes. Having Barney and his partners behind the catastrophe is... well, it's plausible anyway, depending on the final nature of the catastrophe. I'm not entirely sold on it, though. One of the things I think the catastrophe should do (a thematic element brought over from the beginning of JU3) is come completely out of left field and catch *everybody* involved in the Hidden War off guard. No matter *what* the catastrophe is.
Let's see... obviously IFF is my top choice for catastrophe, but there are always other options. Charlie Stross in Singularity Sky had the spontaneous generation of a strongly godlike AI, which then kidnapped 90% of the population and tossed them around the galaxy. Up the kidnapped population to 100% and that could work. We certainly don't have a shortage of artifical intelligences in the JU. (Can't be Minerva, though, no matter how appropriate it is; schizophrenia is much more pleasant when the voices in your head aren't berating you for "turning them evil.") It's a possibility, and one to consider at that.
General environmental collapse is a beloved old standby of this particular idea. I'm not sure it would work in this context, though.
Another old standby is the classic "aliens blew up the Earth." Sort of toyed with in IFF, but that was more accidental; I'm thinking deliberate (like in Titan A.E.). This also has some potential, but I'm worried that this one dovetails too close to JU3, or worse, Operation Phoenix. Oy.
Timing
So, what *is* "far future" anyway? Is it a hundred years? Two? Maybe a thousand? How about fifty thousand?
In the original JU4 notes, I placed the "far future" at two thousand years from the beginning of the JU in general, around 3990. I felt that this was enough time for the refugee colonies to stabilize and then build their own identities instead of being simple caricatures of 21st century nations or cultures. It was also enough time that Earth and pre-catastrophe life would be matters of obscure history or folklore for everybody but a small number of long-lived individuals (who would be either Jihaddi PCs or high powered NPCs).
However, on reflection if we went with the original IFF scenario we wouldn't have to go that far into the future; a mere 4-500 years would suffice to get us to a point where Earth was mostly forgotten by the dude on the street and things would be more or less stable on a planetary basis, if nothing else.
Still, with as much stuff in flux as it is, it's a little early to set a firm date on the timeline. Instead, let's put down a sliding scale between 500 and 1500 years in the future as our general date range.
(tbc)
New idea: The Lyrans invade full-force, dig in somewhere in the eastern hemisphere, but before the Jihad can mount a serious counterattack a previously unknown enemy of the Lyrans drops a planet killer-sized asteroid on their stronghold, thinking that given Earth has no visible ability to oppose the Lyrans its inhabitants will just be turned into some sort of powerful servant so it's acceptible collateral damage. The entire Lyran power structure is destroyed and the Jihad, which has only made itself known to the world last Tuesday, is left to evacuate the surviving population with the Gate.
As for how far into the future, if you think about it the US is only a little over two hundred years old and most if it's population now thinks it was founded by christians as a christian nation. After an emergency evacuation, all the available technology would be used just for survival, people wouldn't start caring about history for at least a couple generations. The point of far future, at least in this case, isn't the passage of time but humanity without Earth. If we put the setting a couple thousand years after the evacuation, I think it gives humanity too much time to rebuild. A few centuries gives settlements enough time to build up a significant industrial and political base, but not much more.
Also, the Lyrans invading in full feels too much like retreading old ground. I know it's probably inevitable, but we really ought to try and keep the attack of the magical space elves separate from the catastrophe.
Although... try this one on for size: The situation comes to a head somehow, and before an attack or a counterattack can be staged the Maenads take the situation into their own hands, thinking that the Jihad can't win they'll deny Barney & Charney the prize by destroying the Earth. They set off some sort of magical rite that turns the planet into a time-delayed bomb, ripping open the whole Hidden War in the process. The newly-revealed Jihad has to evacuate the population before the planet explodes.
I mostly used the Lyrans for irony's sake. They invade but aren't the biggest threat, they all get killed and humanity barely survives, the reason whoever threw the asteroid at us did it because we've been hiding ourselves all along and they didn't think there was a potential ally on Earth; I don't know, it amused me. It also sets them back at the same time it sets humanity back, maybe even enough that we can give ourselves a space-elf free setting and have to think up a new enemy.