Factions in space

I'm looking to run a 5th age (sci-fi 5e) campaign, and I would like some advice on some factions. I would like to limit the amount of "generic space federation" and "evil empire" factions and have an array of multiples consisting of varying ideology and orientation. What are some ideas for various space factions?

Bump

Check out Stars Without Number. its got really good scifi faction generation tables and mechanisms for how they change over time. Lots of good stuff there.

Alternatively fronts from apocalypse world are a neat way to do factions, or at least think about how they form, what they want, how they operate over time, etc.

Do you have a Stars Without Number or Apocalypse World pdf? Or in what thread would I find them?

Forgeborn, a race of lawful evil technological and magical monstrosities created by the corruption of a factory-spaceship after it traveled through a region in space inhabited by an unseen mass of evil/'dark' energy that had been lying dormant until recently disturbed/uncovered.

I like to imagine them as mostly automatons primarily composed of several dark/black steel limbs, with a glowing magma/orangey core, and a spaceship or fleet of matching scheme. Perhaps their primary ship is capable of producing more ships, or they have built some kind of central manufacturing hub on a large asteroid. The insides of their ships would have industrial-like large conveyor belts and buckets of magma hauled by lines over lanes of automatons assembling weapons or tailoring scraps of metal.

I've never written for a sci-fi campaign before, and this doesn't sound like the most original idea, but take it as you will, just what popped into mind while scrolling by the thread. Good luck :-)

There should be a pdf share thread in the catalogue with a big list of places to find whatever you're looking for. SWoN would be in the OSR thread too. And I think the artless version is free to download anyway.

Well, some fun ones i came up with awhile back are as follows.
>The Rekers.
Barely educated junkers who live and work/play around a former war site in a cluster of small planets, moons and asteroids. The region is fairly well contained and, officially, they started off as a group of junking businesses that partnered up to get the bid on the wreckage instead of letting the big guys take it. that was several generations ago, and instead of just going home every few months, they set up a colony on a repaired space station. They aren't truly dangerous, though they are territorial and have activated several outlying defense platforms to create a situation where it will simply take too much money to clear them out anymore and its better to let them be. They salvage the alien and human tech from the battle and there is plenty of it. Tens of thousands of ships, hundreds of capital ships and dozens of space stations and defense platforms make for a lot of wreckage. They allow outsiders to come in and claim specific ships for junking for a price- usually 25% of face value as well as first claim on the best parts.

>1/3 at least.

>The Kuang-Sune Conglomerate
One of the largest megacorps in the galaxy, the Kuang-Sune Conglomerate, or KSC was founded centuries ago during a merger of one of old earth's largest Chinese mining companies with an Arabic manufacturing company. They are responsible for a massive 11% of all galactic mining operations and a respectable 8% of all manufacturing operations. Between the two, they are in the top 5 most powerful entities in the galaxy with their home system boasting a massive 5 billion person call center. The same planet is also home to a modern marvel of engineering, the KSC waste treatment facility, a massive facility spanning an area similar to a small continent. It is necessary due in part to the culture of the inhabitants, who are all of old earth Indian descent.
>2/3

> waste treatment facility required because of inhabitants
> all Pajeets
Ultra Kek

>The Reachers
The reachers are The federation's worst nightmare. Founded after the Treaty of MST3000.2, the reachers are a paramilitary cult founded on several alien principles. They are just barely tolerated, mainly because under treaty terms, they haven't violated any laws. They are heavily armed, actively work against the Federation in many regards, have followers everywhere and their doctrine is spreading like wildfire. They have come to squabbles with the afore mentioned Rekers over the warsite, and with the KSC over the KSC's supposed destruction of holy sites.

What are the alien principles? What do they believe in?

That, my friend, i usually leave up to whomever i mention it to, mainly because mine is magical realm as fuck. borderline slanneshi.

Weird future versions of modern-day religions

But how can one extrapolate Christianity or Islam out thousands of years and predict their interactions with xenos?

Xenophobic spiritualists or xenophile spiritualists for Christians and honor bound crusaders for Islam.

bump

>The Joii Conglomerate

A ruthless trading organization run by sentient plants.

Evolving alongside various other fauna on their home world, their species adapted an airborne chemical release that other animals found irresistible. Once blooming, they would be plucked, eaten or otherwise dispersed by the other fauna. Eventually these species gained higher sentience and kept the flowers around. However due to a ingrained need for their airborne chemicals genetic engineering got out of hand. Eventually leading to the plants themselves gaining a sense of sapience.

Quickly learning their place at the top of their hierarchy they ruled over the indigenous population like drug lord despots. Unsatisfied with their planetbound life they set out to the stars. Settling wherever they could. Upon first contact with an alien species the Joii realized that their chemicals weren't limited to those on their homeworld. But anyone that relied on a olfactory senses. Using this newfound advantage they carved out large expanses of space through rigged trade contracts. Since then, the galaxy at large has had a poor view of the species as a whole

Contact with Joii is recommended against as an interstellar rule of thumb. All newly spacebound species are given a primer on dealing with the Joii. All meetings should be conducted with the other party wearing, at least, a properly sealed environment suit.

That's really cool. Got any more?

Check out the game Endless Space/Endless Space 2, they have some pretty sweet civilizations like:
Space dwarf vikings with an affinity for science

Ancient tree people whose home planet has overgrown into just a giant ball of trees

Australian shitposting ayy lmaos

Robots who escaped from their home dimension due to it being corrupted, naturally able to control time

Jewish fish people

Basically the Starship Troopers Earth government

That's easy.
Islam won't exist in the future.

I got one more for you.

>Arkborne

An ancient race with no home to call its own, the Arkborne travel on massive ships in a single fleet. The ships are made of a nigh-impregnable alloy and many warlike young races have been humbled after trying to assault the fleet. There have been reports of stellar skirmishes halting as the ships pass through battlefields. Each knowing the tremendous power at their disposal should they be fired upon.

The Arkborne as a race are incredibly long-lived, some measuring in the millennia-old range. Scholars, archaeologists and xeno-biologists the galaxy over have studied attempted to study their past. Each coming up with that a vague cataclysmic event some few thousand years ago torn whatever they had apart. Forcing them on these ships where they have lived for countless generations.

As long as your contact with the Arkborne is non-violent they will tolerate your presence. They will answer basic questions, who they are, where they are going and if they are friendly. These answers being, "The Rulers of Naught", "The slow march to Oblivion" and "Only if you are", respectively.

I need to steal this one. These guys intrigue me so much. Do they simply wander aimlessly? Or do they have a destination in mind?

What I'd quite like to see is an interesting Hive Mind. Less 'Obey the will of the Queen, oh insectile drones', but more along the lines of a single mind on the scale of an empire. Hell, perhaps the single-minded spacefaring nation of bug people are eager for immigrants, since a God-mind can only spend so long devote so much of its attention to manual labour before it becomes bored.

>Robots from a dimension of geometric perfection who hate and loathe this universe, and want nothing more than to go home.
>Fish-people Mob bosses.
>!!SCIENCE!! little grey men who, while unable to throw a punch, will cheerfully design a giant robot to do so, give it free will, and an inbuilt toaster oven.
>Tree-people who believe very strongly in infinite cycles of cleansing fire and rebirth.
>Genetically engineered cyborg slaves of a fallen empire, struggling with their inbuilt instincts and pseudo-culture born from the ashes of the destruction of their masters.
>Three ancient clans combined into one empire, each forming a dynastic presence in each aspect of governance.
>Horatio, the most beautiful man alive, and his infinite clones.
>We-thought-it-was-magic-but-it-was-nanomachines Vikings taking to the stars to reclaim their forgotten inheritance
>Xenos species stealing another race's synthetic bodies and technology to survive an apocalypse, worshiping the digital memories of them as saints.

Here's an idea I had a few weeks ago, it's more of a subversion than anything, but I've found it generates interesting galactic conflict and intrigue.

Instead of a xenophilic egalitarian federation, my setting has a league of militant fascists, where the species involved hate each other, but hate those outside of the league who don't share their political views even more. They're essentially a union of those species where their equivalent of Hitler was victorious, and the fascistic fringe extremists of those species where their equivalent of Hitler failed. A few species never fought an equivalent of WW2, because their evolutionary history made militant tribalism the default. They're organized beneath a council of the autocrats of each species, who convene vote on issues which concern the league, and the votes of each council member are dependent on the value their species brings to the league, as determined by the other council members.

Beneath them, it's essentially a grab-bag of every totalitarian traditionalist ideology under the sun, but each shares common characteristics. Extreme militarism, glorification of the state and species, which are considered to be one, and mandatory eugenics programs to enhance their capacity to wage war and labor for the league. There are three divisions of military within the league, which are not necessarily opposed to one another. First, there are the armies of the state, the planetbound militaries of individual species, which can be mobilized in the common event of outside invasion, or the rarer conflict between league species.

> (1/3)

Second, there are the navies of the state, the spacefaring armadas of individual species, which can be mobilized toward the escort of sanctioned traders, invasion of species outside of the league, and cooperation with league forces to ensure their respective species attains a share of the resources plundered and territory acquired. Third, there are the league forces, the combined militaries of the respective states of the league, and the only division which is comprised of multiple species, each assigned to the task their biology is best suited for.

As the league forces are integrated by necessity, they are the only division which is comprised entirely of volunteers. The species have their own command chains, but are arranged in a strict hierarchy where merit is determined by a species contributions to the league's military efforts, as determined by the members of the council which are not members of the species in question. Generally, older species are higher-ranking, and newer species are lower, but there are several exceptions. The respective command chains answer to whomever is in command of their current vessel, who in turn answer to whomever is in command of their current fleet, who in turn answers to the council , who are, almost without exception, experienced military officials themselves.

Their species' territory is scattered across the galaxy in large, ragged patches, and they are in an almost endless state of conflict with species outside of the league, but their universal, overwhelming cultural focus on warfare and military technology has kept them from conclusive defeat. They have undergone a slight decline in recent years, facing a new and unprecedented threat.

> (2/3)

They struggle to compete with the bloody rise of the Tuunth Apel, a rabidly xenophilic, fanatically theocratic empire hell-bent on progressing their technology toward ascension to a higher dimension, who believe ascension is only possible when each living species has united as one form. Tuunth Apel roughly translated to, "Domain of Tuun," Tuun being the supposed progenitor of the Apel's founding species. The Tuunth once resembled earthly armadillos, but with the rise of the One Faith and subsequent thoughrough gene editing, they have begun to resemble shelled, levitating jellyfish, capable of surviving in zero or mid-gravity, subsisting on almost any atmosphere which allows their buoyant forms to float, and synthesizing any amount of chemicals into nutrients, regardless of their origin.

They have forcibly inducted several species into the fold and combined the best of their DNA with theirs, molding them into one superior organism. They believe themselves to be the ultimate "pan-species," and feel each species has a vital role to play in the ascension to come. Because of this, they are the undisputed masters of genetic engineering, to the extent some would claim them to be flesh-warpers, and have an innate understanding of, and to some extent, a built-in capacity to perform, the art of both creating life from scratch, and combining discovered lifeforms into functioning organisms they feel are superior.

Aside from their necessarily metallic FTL and naval armaments, the Tuunth Apel make almost exclusive use of organic, living technology, as opposed to the league, which considers most genetic tampering outside of the perfecting of species within their evolrionat forms to be a filthy and aberrant practice. Their technology is exclusively synthetic, and is more damaging, durable, and cheap to produce, but is less reliable and adapted to a specific task as the Tuunth Apel's biological equivalents.

> (3/4)

The Tuunth Apel and league of fascists are diametrically opposed, and truly believe the extermination of the other is the truest test of their worth there can be. Both sides are willing to do anything for the sake of destroying their foe, and unfortunately, their forces are near perfectly balanced and are largely concentrated on opposite sides of the galaxy. Thousands of minor species and less powerful civilizations are being caught in the crossfire of this massive conflict, and are increasingly faced with a difficult decision, is it better to abandon your own identity to become something higher, or is it better to embrace your own nature to the point of callous far-future savagery?

> (4/4)

I dislike the 2000 symbol limit, but I suppose it's for the best that it's there. Anyway, rate my idea and tell me exactly what you think, in no uncertain terms.

The Vaulters really don't have much of the dwarf part anymore, but make up for it with more technoviking.

...

Mate, you can't just scream /pol/ at something that involves fascism.
It's pretty interesting. I like how the 'Evil Empire' and 'All-accepting Nation' standard factions are somewhat twisted, with the Empire being based around each species biological predilections towards tasks, and the Apel warping and twisting those beneath their rule in search of the perfect life form.