What are good real world cultures to make evil space empires based off of besides Rome, Nazi Germany...

Egypt. Stargate did a hell of a job with Spess Pharaohs.

The British Empire or Belgium at the height of colonialism both did some pretty awful things as part of their mercantile efforts. Having an evil space empire that was more focussed on money-making than conquest could be an interesting variation.

So, Space Jews as Goebbels would have written them?

Think of any moderately successful people from the perspective of their enemies.

France, Great Britain, and the US are great ones.

What are you talking about, user? I--Rasputin is dead. They shot him, remember? Nobody could survive that.

Yes

Red Khemers.

GB Empire.

Fuck off back to your shitty Greek and Turkish shitstain of an empire, you pathetic excuse for a Roman successor state.

Chinese Empire or Imperialistic Japan

Imperial Japan: the Murderhobo of Nations.

>Karl XII's Swedish Empire
You mean Cardinal Richelieu's Swedish Empire.

Rockefellers.

I think the British Empire is a good one, especially if you have East India Trading Company equivalents.
Aliens without ideology who just want to take your shit. They'll work together with you, but only because it lets them take al your shit easier. And if you cut into their profits by disobeying they'll murder you without a blink.
The opium wars were literally Britain getting mad that the Chinese wanted to crack down on opium addiction.
Plus, they'll learn about your culture and exploit it against you. Blowing up Indian rebels with cannons meant that they could have proper funeral rites.

North Korea.

Hilariously, the opium trade into China only started en masse because Britain was getting mad jelly of all the wealth flowing from Europe to China because of the high demand for chinese imports such as tea, silk and porcelain, while the chinese didn't really want anything the British had other than money. So some bright spark at the East India Company came up with the idea of growing shit tonnes of opium, auctioning it off to independent European traders who then sold it into China through the sole trading port of Canton. Being pretty fucking addictive this reversed the flow of wealth as demand for opium sky-rocketed.

The Chinese Emperor then tried banning the opium trade, and seized a shit load of opium, closed trade and confined the British to their quarters, and worst of all, didn't pay for the opium, which gave the British the excuse they needed to blow some shit up and force the Chinese to give them better trade deals.

They later decided that the terms they'd been given weren't good enough and so had a second war, generously allowing the French and US to join in

I think this is a good one. Not because I agree, but because it concisely points out what makes an empire evil: being on the business end of their guns/spears.

>implying Rasputin isn't the OG Wandering Jew

We're not successor state, you dumb unwashed Frank

The Dutch empire was pretty comfy

Belgium would make the Terran Empire look nice.

The british empire
Germans at any time period.

If you do a proxy for the British Empire, one area you should definitely explore is how the Brits doggedly kept up the kayfabe that they were the benevolent caretakers of a bunch of ungrateful lesser peoples who needed--but tragically refused--their guidance. This is what gets wrong, the Empire did have an ideology, an ideology that believed in he supremacy of middle-class English values and that the responsibility to export those values to the rest of the world, and it used that ideology the same way all ideologies are used--to grease the wheels of exploitation.

The Brits knew how to turn every one of their deaths into mass media outrage while whitewashing or outright erasing the millions of corpses left in their wake. To this end they were also masters of Not Murdering People, Just Causing Them To Die. They didn't need to burn down villages or line people up before firing squads(though they did) they would just move entire populations into concentration camps where they had no food or adequate sanitation, or order farmers to grow jute for sandbags instead of food, and just let nature take its course. It served an important role in providing a way to turn their myriad atrocities into regrettable but unforeseeable tragedies.

That's what would make the British Empire In Space such a great villain, it's not their evil actions that make you hate them, but their complete self-satisfaction while doing them.

Flying pyramids we wuz kangs empire.
if it was written by /pol/
Mayans could work they're pretty nasty, if you think of space akin to water you could chose a seafaring nation like the vikings. Your empire could just like raiding and exploring.

The Spanish during the Renaissance era. Their conquerors are semi-independant freebooters not really bound on actually developing their colonies, just looting and flying away. They seek an imaginary planet somewhere in the universe, where they believe all the gold is.

The French during Louis XIV's reign : ruled by an absolute monarch who believes he's a god (it goes quite deeper than that, actually), decadent, aristocratic, and surprisingly cultured. They waste an insane amount of money on frivolities, like, cargoing water from an ocean world to fuel the King's waterpool, and they go to war only for the diplomatic reputation.

Spanish Empire.
Plot twist: They're the good guys who did nothing wrong but everyone else is a dipshit

You both have very different ideas of the Spanish Empire and you are both wrong.

Spanish developed and invested in their colonies much more than their british and portuguese counterparts, the reason they ended up under developed is that their economic and politic model was out dated.

But they were genocidal zealots and notoriously bad to anyone, including their own subjects, based on race, class, religion. Basically spanish nobility/wealthy citizens always had a reason to despise the lower classes and each other. Either for not being catholic enough, for having moorish, black, native blood on their lineage somewhere, or for coming from the 'wrong' part of spain (anywhere but Castella), or for not having enough money.

And they were indirectly responsible for the death of literal millions in just a couple centuries. While they didnt invested so heavily in the slave market as the portuguese did, they did insist on the notion of changing the natives, rather than killing all of them outright, which lead to, ironically, more deaths and pain.

>United States

> Nation actively suppresses innovation and intelligence
> Uses industrial might to interfere in the affairs of other nations
> Eventually collapses under the weight of it's own stupidity after outsourcing any real jobs to the other nations
> Becomes a population of inbred retarded subsistence farmers scratching their backsides while trying to farm rocks

Poppies are still banned in China. You can't eat poppyseed bagels there.

I don't want to defend execution by cannon, or the British colonialism in general, but those executions happened in bloodthirsty retaliation after the 1857 uprising, where formerly loyal soldiers literally chopped up their commanders, + wives and children with knives, raped and drowned civilians after surrendering and making terms, etc. etc.
The Indian Uprising was off the fucking hook on all sides, and the East India Company took some awful fucking revenge, but it was revenge, not just wanton bloodlust.

Ah Spain the empire with so much gold it caused Inflation and made everyone gunning for them. I do love a good pirate, spanish treasure ship story though.

>Genocidal.
Wut. It was more about fucking the native puss after the plagues than intentional genocide bro, the Spaniards supplanted the native culture and tried to absorb them in they image, but they respected the "fueros" of the natives than helped them like the Tlaxcalans and later natives than were used as auxiliaries, you can still find lots of traditions in Mexico or any other iberian colony with all as fuck roots, with only a thinly painted Catholic/christian paintjob.

>You will never be a young Spanish conquistador about to set sail to smash some brown puss with dubious consent but it's okay because they're not Catholic yet

you retarded
fuck you

Pfff
listen to this
>nation of settlers from different worlds all over
>has lots of elements of other cultures, but no unifying identity
>becomes the face of the UN equivalent due to its multiculturalism
>team america, galaxy police
>mishmash of cultures waters down into a themepark version of everything with a big consumerism base
>diplomatic ties and media allow it to spread its culture
>its culture is basically just one of fake authenticity
>its vassal states are not explicit vassal states, just reliant on its military and drip fed their cultureless culture
>"vassal states" slowly converting completely to tourism based economies with easily digestable themepark versions of their old culture
>anybody to wanting to make it big and not be a tourist attraction has to move to the states for their career and help perpatrate this trend
>generic allience of planets is actually a black hole of homogenuity that all member states get pulled into, until everyone is the same
imagine europe slowly turning into canada because everyone only consumes american media and adapts to american sensibilities

While portuguese accidentaly wiped out millions with many misguided policies or outright lack of care, spanish settlements were famous for sending out expeditions with the sole purpose of wiping out tribes at a time, so hundreds, thousands at best. it's less than millions, but the intent was genocidal. And when the tlaxcalans got out of hand and went full bloody sacrifice on the aztecs civilians, the spanish did not broke a sweat trying to stop it.

According to geoligical research around Aztec cities and what we know of their means of productions, it's believe by the time of Cortez arrival, Tenochtilan had more people living in it than the largest city of europe by then (I believe Toledo was the most popular center in europe by then with 30k thousand people and Tenochtilan was around 70k people). There were about 3 million natives living in the central america between the isles and the yukatan peninsula.

Two centuries later, and there are less than 100k.

You sound pretty well-versed on Rasputin, was it true he had a dick 35 cm long when erect?

36.5, why do you ask?

Shoot mang, that's a dang good angle

Nah, it's cool, thanks for clearing that up. While I was thinking purely in "bad guy" aspects, context for doing that is appreciated. How would the PCs react when people claiming to be on their side also act monstrous?

>(I believe Toledo was the most popular center in europe by then with 30k thousand people and Tenochtilan was around 70k people).
>During the 16th century, Paris was the largest city in Europe, with a population of about 350,000 in 1550.

So Rome?

That's also why those places are shitholes today. Brits didn't dip their pens in the local inkwells too often, and so the US and the Commonwealth states are pretty much white countries except for SA (which is its own cautionary tale anout colonialism and egalitarian law being a poor match).
Meanwhile en Nueva España:
>breed Spanish temper with native low IQ, propensity for human sacrifice, etc.
>raise them in pagan barbarism thinly disguised as Catholicism
>instill the Spanish traditions of honor heavy culture and violent problem resolution
>what could possibly go wrong :DDDDDDDD

Calm down on the political and cultural mumbo jumbo.
The US has overthrown quite a few democratic elected governments, why not use that as a basis?
Space US is in a cold war with [generic other culture] and is doing some nasty stuff in the name of the greater good.

The Swiss

Neo-Assyrian for instant brutal win

>imagine europe slowly turning into canada because everyone only consumes american media and adapts to american sensibilities
You basically described modern Sweden.

>no unifying identity
Commies like you get thrown out the airlock in Space America. Real Americans do have a sense of identity as such. You're just so hopped up on globalist propaganda that you can't tell the difference between honesty and irony anymore.

>North Korea
Cartoon supervillianry at its finest.

Pretty much any of the colonial powers will do.

>British
Pretty much a cross between the Star Wars Galactic Empire, and a Kafkaesque bureaucratic nightmare. All forms need to be filled out in six dimensional triplicate.

>Germany
Holy crap, you guys don't have beer. Fuck now we have to oppress you and build some breweries on your planet.

>Belgium
An empire of murderhobbos. Kill the natives for xp, lols, and their stuff.

are you wearing jeans or lederhosen, fine consumer?

>Aztec empire
Conquering or raiding other systems for blood tribute. This empire practices some kind of spiritual biotechnology. They experiment, and vivisect the tributes in the hopes of evolving themselves into the ultimate life form.

Resurrecting an idea from the retro science fiction thread.

>an empire of radioactive undead communists. All are equal in undeath.

Inca Thanatocracy (rule by the dead) the Incas had to expand with every new emperor, as he couldn't claim the territories of his dad, grandpa, etc - their mummies still ruled as avatars of the Sun God (with sun priests "interpreting" their will)

Check out Nikolai Dante for a series based around this setting.

Ugandan Republic under Idi Amin.
"Nationalist" military dictatorship supported by greater outside powers, lots of embezzlement, frequent purges and terrorization of enemies internal and external, horrific tortures and executions, all led by a cartoonish villain.

Isn't being pro-guns integral part of American believes while Sweden is strictly anti-guns?

You could also play reggae in the background for this campaign because Idi Amin is a folk hero for rastafarians.

Integral to about a third of the population, important to about half.

Khmer Rouge

Pretty important third, considering it includes wildlife and natural resource managers and conservationists

Austria-Hungary.

I'm not saying it isn't important. I'm saying it's not considered a core value by a large amount of American people. I don't even consider it a core value and I'm not anti-gun at all.

Timur.

REVOLUTIONARY FRANCE!

Neither. I'm shitposting naked.

The Spanish Empire, since it's horrifically underrepresented.

Alternately, a lot more interestingly, Jan van Leyden's Munster. A religious cult, previously assumed to be pacifistic has seized control of a massive city with amazingly strong walls. The cult, led by Leyden (Who's now claiming to be a prophet) slaughters the non-believers and forces everyone into polygamy and communal property ownership. His forces then manage to hold off a siege by the entire might of the HRE for three years. Just change it so that he ends up winning the siege and going on a conquering spree, instead of what really happened. Since in real history, Munster fell, his skin was ripped off with him still alive, his tongue was cut out with a hot poker, and his heart stabbed by a flaming dagger.

As their military forces are lead by mr awesome name: Conrad von Hötzendorf.

to all you people who shout /pol/ at every thing slightly right of center, this is what real /pol/ looks like

Maybe not an empire, but I can see that happening to some Space Station or converted Asteroid the PCs used to hang out at.

>What are good real world cultures to make evil space empires based off
Space Ottomans would be amazing.

>Ancient Empire that's been around for nearly a thousand years
>Most of its actual staying power has been via strategic marriages and conquests of less powerful nations
>Militarily it's decently incompetent, considering the massive difficulty in having 8 official languages
>Fracturing at the seams due to having 12 different nationalism movements in its borders
>Literally only being held together by one brilliant arch-conservative politician
I mean, if you like your evil empires being sickly and decadent, sure

That sounds fantastic, actually.

This sounds like a beautiful clusterfuck. I need to run campaign in not!Austria one day.

>Never was the aggressor in any conflict
>Did nothing wrong
>Being conquered by everyone at once for being different
>Actually the good guys

Be sure to include the fact that the Emperor is a doddering fool after the Crown-Prince shot himself and his lowborn lover after the Emperor refused to let them marry. The only heir is a nice guy, but a politically inept Archduke who wants reconciliation with the Slavs.

And Strauss music. Be sure to place the Kaiserwaltzer at least once.

Belgium for sure.

The Leviathan trilogy would be a great setting for that.
>WWI
>Charles Darwin had somehow discovered genetic engineering
>Allies use biotech monsters for everything
>Central Powers use steampunk mecha
>the Ottomans and Americans use a mix of both

Link to that thread?

They better be opposed by the notorious tyrant Vlad the Expeller, known for having thrown 20,000 Ottoman prisoners out the airlock.

Yeah the British Empire was great at doing the poor-me act after massacring a group of natives.

It's like that old joke: A British soldier is beating a Irishman with the butt of his rifle and the Irishman puts his hands up and asks, "Why do you hate us so much?"

The soldier leans down and hisses, "You bastard, we'll never forgive you for what we did to you."

>Forgetting best Korea

Oh, how I hate the Swiss.

>good angle

Imperial Japan. The Caliphate

April fools? Or did you seriously confuse emprah Haile Selassie with Amin?

Normans, although you might make bad ass evil space empire.

Heres a very short brainstorm

>Descended from a wave of techno barbarians that begun an age of war and chaos coming from the edge of civilzation
>Most barbarians were driven off but a few were so formidable that they were incorporated as a Great House with its own planets and part of the broader galactic community
>However, unable to shed their core values and their realm is full of backstabbing
>To stop this bloodshed, significant numbers of non first born children were sent across the galaxy to "make a name" for themselves
>These battle hardened barbarian princes sold their services to the highest bidder and with some cunning and guile, they carve out bigger and bigger little fiefdoms and for a while it is good

The setting begins at a time where the galaxy approaches a second age of war as these Space Norman enclaves begin to bump borders and fight each other. Any little spark can set off a chain of alliances, marriages and sworn oaths to break everything down.

Klingons?

>Flying pyramids we wuz kangs empire
So like stargate?

nice trips
But no, some Rastafari believe/believed Amin was great and the negative shit (like murdering the hell out of his people) was just propaganda from Babylon (which is the USA, globalism, Jews, Arabs, pretty much anything an isolated island stoner would be afraid of/The Man/The Devil).

Here's a song I know that references Idi Amin in a positive light with other Rastafari heroes and martyrs. Granted this is from 1982 so I guess less probably buy into that idea now.
youtube.com/watch?v=quktsQ7oXzM

Tell us more.