Let's create a scifi setting one fact at a time

Although there hasn't been war for a hundred years, the politicians who control the Confederacy fear losing any power due to revolutions and as a result clamp down hard on dissent and maintain a large army to keep control of all of humanity under it's authoritarian banner.

The various factions of this setting are all varying shades of gray and The Confederacy is simply the lightest shade of gray.

Their banner is a gold dog turd on a red field, to honor Mars and it's tireless efforts to feed the solar system.

Ignored

The Confederacy and its assorted problems, despite holding a monopoly on front page headlines, are distant concerns to those who do not live on Earth or its sister planets Mars and Mercury.

>Mercury
Fuck me, I meant Venus.

H3 gas harvested from the gas giants is humanity's new source of fuel along with massive fields of solar panels suspended in space and arranged in massive rings around planets.

H3 gas is incredibly expensive because of the months that it takes to deliver and the risk of pirate attacks.

Mercury, despite being inhabited has had huge problems. Every time a permanent settlement is founded mysterious raiders sack their dog turd manufacturing plants, leaving everyone without rations.

The Confederacy uses the Royal Navy naming conventions for their ships

Ignored

Despite having a large military, the Confederacy is still inexperienced and has no real doctrine because a space war has never happened before in the history of humanity (although they are proficient at wiping out pirates when they do run into them).

The pirates are a strange lot: the descendants of people who, after seeing what happened with the Confederacy, decided "fuck planets, I'm living in space."
Due to the wear and tear on spaceships, they prefer boarding actions to outright naval battles, and consider the ship to be a more important bit of loot than the ship's cargo.

Because of constant shortage of materials and supplies, the pirates have become experts at getting the most out of what they have, including other humans (that is to say cannibalism).

The pirates aren't actually united and are split into many different feuding clans who mostly stick to their areas of space.

Pirate hierarchy is mostly tribal and alliances are mainly forged by marriage.

Pirates are like Mongol nomads and wander their territory in their fleets which double as their home.

Ajax Particles are sprayed from special emitters on ships to form large clouds that act as shields but have the side effect of scrambling unshielded electronics and long range communication.

The main ship armaments are a complement of plasma lances (basically just your regular old scifi energy weapon) and one gigantic railgun. The plasma lances are counteracted by the Ajax Particle clouds and while there is no real counter to the railguns, the huge energy cost to firing one as well as the reload time, the weight of the munitions and damage to the barrel makes it only viable to fire a limited amount of times. The lack of reliable long range targeting also limits the railguns to being useful only in certain situations.

Can we get some Dwarf lore?

Ajax Particles are dog turds.

Ignored

Setting Fact #387: this statement is false.

Dwarves don't have ears, per se. Instead, they evolved incredibly sensitive vibration senses, so they can communicate via tapping on the tunnel walls.

Ancient bipedal species who left Earth and settled on Mars. After being cut from Earth because of a systemwide cataclysm, they decided to go underground.

Dogs were never tamed in this setting. As such, dog turds do not exist.

No one expect you thinks that this is funny and everyone is ignoring your "contributions".

In an attempt to terraform Mars, unrestricted industrialization programs are encouraged by the planetary government to melt the ice caps, thus creating an atmosphere.

Can we get some Elf lore?

Extremely tall and thin people that have long been transformed to live in zero gravity. They live in hive colonies across the Kuiper Belt.

The elves are mostly descended from colonists and scientists who were sent into deep space to research the effects of living in space on humans.

They have developed a monarchy and their own society during their time separated from the rest of humanity and with the influx of regular human miners now that contact was reestablished with the Confederacy, racial tensions are running high.

Some of the more impressive "elf" traits like night vision, long lives and dexterity are the product of genetic engineering; the little-known twist is that the scientists involved did not have the permission or even the knowledge of the elven people or government and did it via retrovirus.

Although technically supposed to be subservient to the Confederacy, the Elven monarchy is constantly at odds with them and are in a pseudo Cold War.

The population is controlled via Brave New World style societal and genetic manipulation with a similar caste system.

Alright so the factions we have are
>Space America with the military-industrial complex on overdrive and a dash of fascist ideology
>Space mongols
>Orgy porgy space elves
>literally just dwarfs but on Mars
Any more factions that should be added? Any expansions to the current factions? I think Dwarfs need more fleshing out.

Artificial gravity doesn't exist so space colonies generate "gravity".

Since having rebels would be really cliched as an enemy, how about space Genghis Khan going around uniting the Pirate clans?

The Confederacy secretly makes sure that AI technology doesn't progress because it has the possibility of destabilizing their hold on humanity.

So... America/PMCs?

So Dwarfs are ancient ayy lmaos? Why did their civilization collapse? Are they the progenitor species to the humans?

Lack of a magnetosphere combined with low gravity means that it'd be hemorrhaging atmosphere constantly. Kinda need to do something about that first.

What I'm getting is that it's the military-industrial-political complex on steroids and any kind of dissent is cracked down on Judge Dredd style. Speaking of which, we need to figure out what the companies that secretly run everything are.

The most powerful corporations are run like noble houses, keeping ownership within a tightly-knit family. The current CEO of the powerful agricultural corp Progenex is notorious for wedding impressionable young corporate heirs to take control of their assets, then hiring professionals to stage unfortunate accidents, leaving him as the sole owner.

Dwarfs fight in specially made battlesuits that are basically Scopedogs. Sorry in advance for the shitty gif.

Bannerly Industrial is the company that creates almost every weapon and ship in the solar system. Starting out as a small time firearms maker, they slowly expanded into other fields and bought up their competition while also keeping the contracts. Now it is a weapons giant with different divisions creating wildly different products that often face each other on the battlefield. If any battle or skirmish happens, it is a sure bet that both sides received their weapons from Bannerly. They often do their best to keep fighting going on as long as possible to extract as much profit as they can and if no fighting is to be found, they fund and supply extremist groups to make some. They frequently throw around their weight in politics and have a say in most governmental decisions.

It isn't uncommon for Bannerly officials to turn a blind eye and allow thefts of weapon shipments (especially of high tech prototypes) if it means that the Confederacy will be facing a more credible threat and therefore will give them more money for R&D and base "security".

Paige Electronics creates most consumer devices and what few military things aren't handles by Bannerly. They are fairly new on the scene and dislike the lack of power they have as well as the restrictions on research put on them through backdoor threats. They are slowly starting to align themselves with the Elves.

The various design bureaus in Bannerly act as if they were still seperate companies and constantly conspire against one another and back different factions in whatever minor squabble is happening at the moment.

Because space is vast, the Confederate forces cannot be everywhere at once and therefore the Confederacy hires PMCs to help bolster its forces. The PMCs are put under severe limitations and aren't allowed to be big enough to threaten the Confederacy. They usually patrol the more remote regions of the solar system, away from civilization. Some of the bigger PMCs have their own internal design bureaus that design their own weapons, fighters, ships, etc.

Progenex is vital to the Confederacy's hold on power and often delays food deliveries in areas where revolt is predicted to happen in order to starve the populace into submission.

Ignored

One man has reached almost legendary celebrity status, despite him being but a hobo on Mars. His moment of fame? When the Mars Riots happened, he just calmly strode to a live newscaster that was covering the scene and started rambling about how the government is all secretly run on dog turds. Even though the live feed was disconnected shortly after, he was catapulted into meme status in the internet, with his face plastered under text like "Dog Turds Did 11/9", "Reptilians be stealing our dog turds" and the like. even though he tried capitalizing on this, he never received any money for his efforts, just bags upon bags of dog turds sent by internet trolls. When interviewed five years after his famous 'dog turd' speech, he thinks it was 'a government conspiracy to market dog turd and control the economy'.
Suffice to say, that it wasn't a surprise when a month later, he's taken to the local mental institute.

The inside of Mars is a hollow world, a mix of dwarven tunneling over the years and strange natural formations that are home to their own ecosystems.

Progenex worked with the Confederacy to delay shipments to Pluto when a minority of the miners went on strike. Allowing time for Confederate Marines to storm the nab modules while starving out the protesters.

Genetics wise, they seem to have descended from early rodents. Fossil records show large rodents that might have been the dwarves' sapient ancestors. Theories regarding their extinction vary.
The exact nature of the cataclysm is unknown since the dwarves have lost the records over time. However, recent developments in planetary geology indicates the entire solar system was basked in high energy gamma rays in the middle of the neozoic era for at least a millennia.
Strangely, Earth does not seem to have been effected by the increased radiation.

Morrain Biotech's Cordwainer Division has created a large supply of labor based on old earth animals, called Underpeople. These animals are sentient but bred to be subservient to the will of man, which they refer to as the instrumentality.

The Confederacy is at a secret/occult war with a group of higly modified soldiers and scientists, more similar to Gods than to mere humans, called the Council for Human Development. This conflict started when the CfHD started modifing the colonists of Charon for their unknown agenda .

The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter was colonized by a mining corporation a century ago. Right now, a civil war is raging there.

On one hand there is the Corporate Autority of the Belt, a cyberpunk-like government officialy under the law of the Confederacy but de facto independent, who is led by the Board of Directors, who oversee the mining operations and protect the shareholders interests.

On the other hand, there is the All-Miners Union, an outlawed trade union who acts as a communist guerrilla.

A bunch of hack writers make yet another failed attempt to write a coherent story

Paige Electronics is secretly sending representatives to all the various factions that are planning an insurrection against the Confederacy to have them work together on a united front and overthrow the corrupt Confeds together.

The elven prince and heir apparent has gone missing 5 years ago. The king has become bedridden with illness and a council of regents have taken over.

The King was poisoned by the head of the council in order to seize power

Elves have bright colored skin and sometimes darkened eyes that protects them from radiation.

Some of their colonies are made with weak radiation protection on purpose to deny other sentient species easy access.

The caste system makes it obligatory for most of them to wear "dicipline" collars. They are believed to be only a punishment device that causes pain or death if activated, but are in fact able to influence the behavior of the wearer both positively and negatively, making the wearer easier to control.

Massive magnet-industry boom

Despite it making no logical sense, elves and dwarves can interbreed. Theories on why vary, but the accepted reason is that dwarf genes were used to make the elves able to survive in high pressure systems.

There are huge, lizard-like beasts living in the caverns on mars.

They have six legs and breathe a gas that induces rapid calcification.

The lizards have huge bulbous eye like structures over their tiny, almost blind eyes.
These structures are used to sense vibrations and as a warning mechanism, they sometimes make "stare constests" using these "eye" to scare off other creatures when fighting over territory.
Their territory can take kilometer of caves and is litered with the calcified remains, sometimes shattered remains, of their victims.

A fleet of colony ships wzx launched from Earth to Alpha Centauri when the Unification War seemed like it would kill all of humanity. It is now a little over 100 years later and the fleet should have reached the system and started its colony. Everyone is waiting for the transmission to know if everything is alright.

>wzx
*was

The gas giant H3 mining colonies are controlled by the Spacer Guild who are motivated by money above all else. They align with whoever lines their pockets the most.

Magnet-technology develops a way to generate an artificial magnetic field around Mars and along with a nanotechnology solution brought in by a merger with a rival corporation (something like Weyland-Yutnani only with existing companies in-universe).
The nanotechnology was put to test at the Asteroid Belt, with some catastrophic results for the inhabitants but serving their purpose as tests to master the tech, which was then applied to Mars, basicly remaneging the core of the planet, causing the magnetic field to be able to both keep the newly forming atmosphere and protecting the surface from radiation. Part of the Dwarven population is against these procedures and believe that some earthqua ... marsquakes(?) were caused by this nanotech, causing a lot of damage to their underground cities.

The Company sees the insurrections on the Asteroid Belt and on Mars' Underground as minor inconveniences in face of the profit it is amassing with this new tech.

It would take about 4 years for the transmission to reach Earth.

>a little over a 100 years

These caverns are so vast and varied, that one can make a decent, if dangerous living via mapping them out and cataloguing fauna and flora.

The main armaments for fighters are miniature plasma lances and ion blasters with the ability to carry explosive ordinance, wire guided missiles, etc. on pylons.

These Rodent-Dwarves are obsessively pro-social, and suffer from severe anxiety from being alone for extended periods of time.
This has given rise to surprisingly large dwarven communities inside of human or elf cities and colonies despite prejudice and ill-will between parties.

The main fighter for the Confederacy is the Centurion, a two seater, carrier capable craft with 2 plasma lances and 2 ion blasters in the nose and highly advanced wire guided missiles with short range heat seeking capabilities mounted on wing pods as the standard weapons.

The Centurion is markedly bigger than other fighters but compensates with by being one of the fastest fighters in production, having a variable geometry that allows use in both atmosphere and in space and miniature Ajax particle emitters (the first of their kind) that increase survivability in combat and in a pinch can be used to enter a planet's atmosphere with little harm done to the fighter (although this will deplete most of the particles stored aboard). This is the first ever fighter capable of entering atmosphere without blowing up.

The Confederacy also has a single seat fighter called the Hoplite that is much cheaper, but carries less ordinance, has less hard hitting weapons on board, has no particle emitters, cannot change configurations for different missions and is much older.

Oh of course, interbreeding, why not?
The interbreeding aspect seems to have been built in on purpose. It seems that whoever created the Dwarves eons ago is still present and manipulating the creation of Elves and maybe even stiring the development of humans.

The Centurion has proven to be a nightmarish foe for the rebels, for without a massive, loud mothership for Rebel tech to detect, teams of Centurions have been able to pull off catastrophically effective surprise attacks against what was believed to be rebel bases fully prepped for attack.

One hundred genetically engineered supersoldiers were created by the Confederation. They quickly mutinied, captured a Confed warship and escaped to the outer Solar System. They raid megacorporate ships for fun and profit.

Alpha Centauri is 4,3 light years away from Earth, a transmission from there would reach us in 4 to 5 years because it travels at the speed of light.
The ships take 100 years to get there because they can't travel at light speed, but once there they can send the transmission back to us.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha_Centauri_Bb

If they found hostile aliens there, it would take 4 years for the warning to reach us, and if those aliens have faster than light travel we are screwed.

>They raid dog turd for profit
Ftfy

Okay so if I've got this right, on one side of this cold war that is about to turn hot we have
>Confederacy
>Dwarves (probably)
>Corporate Authority of the Belt
>most of the megacorporations (although Bannerly is probably supplying both sides)

and on the other side are
>Elves
>Paige Electronics
>possibly the All-Miners Union
>whatever rebellions here and there that survive long enough to get contacted by PE

off doing their own thing are
>pirates
>supersoldiers
>PMCs
>Spacer Guild

And in the middle of all this, a missing Elven prince is running around

"A little over 100 years" means that it's been a bit more than 100 years and the transmission should be coming any month now.

Let's add colonial separatists who no longer want to support the population living on the poisoned and dying Earth to the mix

>Lone Elven Prince
Sounds like Protagonist material to me.
I love displaced Nobles!