The shout outs will
keep coming the more people talk to me and let me join the ranks of their blog
networks. This time its for
International House of Paincakes, who are one of the most renowned blog
networks out there, they have probably hundreds of blogs with them, the
majority of them good (at least in my experience). So follow the link to their page on my
website by clicking the banner on the right and check them out.
While originally I
was going to continue the bit on culture but that will come after this
one. I was writing for the second
culture article (on military culture on a planet) but I realized while I was
doing it that so much of it was dependent on what had happened in the past of
the planet for the current style of how things work and people interact that
the history bit should be done after the purpose bit. So for all intents and purposes at the moment
consider the order for designing a planet to be ecosystem, geography, purpose,
history, and then culture. Writing this
blog is really helping me to develop my skills as well since I never really
documented how I did things like I am now, so with this new knowledge at the
front of my consciousness I will now continue.
History is going to
be one of the most important parts of your planet/city/nation/whatever the heck
you are scaling this series down (or up) to.
This will give direction for personalities on the world and a certain mindset
that follows various events, perhaps helping you to make decisions on political
situations or current events that you were unsure of before. Defining the history requires taking into
account all the players that might have a part in events on the planet, being
the ecosystem, geography, things to fight for/over, people in the immediate
area or that have a stake in the place, and also potential random events. The potential of random events is nigh
unlimited, from natural disasters to warp storms to freak mutations to great
economic boom. Lets focus on the effects
of history upon the economy as this can change a lot of different things. If a planet ends up being well off throughout
history then its soldiers will be better equipped, its citizens happier and
healthier, every part of it would be bigger and in general better off, allowing
for facilities that might not be seen on poorer planets such as a fully
outfitted space port that is able to repair space cruisers or similar items
that require a significant deal of wealth.
The events that might be more likely to happen in history when a planet
is wealthy would involve gangs and politicians that are economically powerful
and well funded, having battles for money and for the higher profiting markets
instead of the less profitable (though still nice) drug or slave trades. Pirates would probably be more apt to attack
the planet or ships near its space, perhaps the attention of Orks or other
xenos could be attracted because of the splendor of the region. If the planet is poor certain elements not
seen in wealthy places become commonplace such as disease and a very large and
dangerous crime world. People could be
reeling from a plague that killed billions of them due to poor living
conditions and bad medical facilities only twenty years ago or even several
millenia, the impact of that would have left a very long lived impression upon
the people. Gangs could have more
strength and influence in cities than the local militia because so many people
need to resort to crime to survive, perhaps gang wars are a permanent feature
in the hives, destroying a different block every day from the scale of the
battles. Finally chaos cults are far
more likely to permeate certain parts of society because of the lack of
imperial supervision over all aspects of society like they are in wealthier
settings, so potential demon incursions or just chaos uprisings against the
local forces have happened or are building up to the point that the current
event is the uprising. Defining how the
economy is or has been opens up avenues to take the planet's history down.
What defining the
history of the planet does is it provides support for future developments in
your setting, helping provide strong reasons for why things are as they are and
allowing for a natural progression of development with the planet. It adds an element to your story that you can
refer back to if you ever need inspiration on where to take your story when you
are at a dead end or having writer's block, perhaps it is something that your
characters can discuss and how the problems that they are facing are not new
but originate all the way from when the planet was first colonized.
The Jungle Planet
was settled to keep the Eldar in check so that brings one potential player and
event into play. Because it is a jungle
disease would be far more common and would travel far faster due to the high population
density of bugs that might carry bacteria or viruses. Settling the planet was never an economic
endeavor so the economy would be either poor or average, defining what kinds of
problems might have happened on the planet.
Governors of the planet would almost always come from the Generals in
the Army or Navy, so how the leaders would react to problems could be
categorized and determined by the process of the military's procedures and
ideals. Based on all of this the planet
has been colonized for about 3000 years and a lot has happened in that
time. The initial claiming of the planet
took about four months, time where the Army was deployed onto the planet and
painstakingly searched the majority of its area seeking out potential
hostiles. After that time the engineers
and workforce were brought down and they cleared large swathes of land and
began building the structures and fortresses that are mostly still up
today. This took three decades to finish
the development of the planet, during which nothing significant really
occurred. This was followed by several
centuries of peace and boring history.
After some time the Dark Eldar chose to make a raid upon the planet,
swooping in and terrorizing the place for about a week and kidnapping thousands
of people and taking much plunder before disappearing back into space without a
trace. Because of how the Imperium of
Man works and its propensity to blame the wrong people for everything they
became furious with the Exodites and so built up a massive force and prepared
to send out forces to attack the worlds.
Because the Eldar are so psyker dependent and look into the future they
determined that they were going to be attacked and so the Exodites and two
craftworlds launched a preemptive strike against the planet, crippling key
ships and killing billions of guardsmen and thousands of tanks before the Eldar
finally were driven back. At this point
the defenses were rebuilt, the garrison reinforced by the local population as
well as by off world imperial guard soldiers, adding some more diversity to the
ranks of the soldiers. From here a cold
war with the eldar began where the imperium would put a massive army very close
to the eldar who would respond with a massive force of their own or some piece
of super technology and so on. This
continued for a while before a massive Ork Waaagh! Swept into the system having
been drawn by the escalating tension and seeing a potential for much fighting
and plunder. This unified the Eldar
Exodites and the Imperial administrators of this sector and so they fought the
Orks for several decades before finally ending the threat of the Orks. To this day Ork warbands still pop up on the
planet due to the spores created by the Orks that had gotten onto the planet
those millenia back. From there the only
thing that has happened is the building of a massive space port made to repair
just about any Imperial ship in the galaxy aside from those operated by the
space marines.
What happened after
this point now is current events which will be one of the last things we work
on for this planet.
No comments:
Post a Comment