Planetfall: a civilization RP (SIGN UPS!)

[Negative_Null They/Them]

28 minutes ago, Mackfin Sharky said:

Hey guys, new member but this looks like a ton of fun. Please lmk if I'm doing anything wrong. I know about double posting, and my parents did teach me basic human kindness, but besides that I don't know much of the etiquette of this forum. Here's my entry for the RP. 

 

Dosuli

Honored to have you here as your first post. By southern mountains do you mean the ones on the pole continent?

Otherwise, looks like a fun faction. Thanks for joining!

[Shard of Sharks He/Him]

9 hours ago, Negative_Null said:

Honored to have you here as your first post. By southern mountains do you mean the ones on the pole continent?

Otherwise, looks like a fun faction. Thanks for joining!

I’d prefer the ones on the southeast island, but if someone else wants that the pole continent is good too. Thanks!

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

20 hours ago, Negative_Null said:

Also everyone, I added the map for the planet to the main post! Take a look and see if there's anywhere you want for your starting place. We'll probably wait a couple days for all the people who have expressed interest to be able to respond, and then start up. I hope it will be fun

Lower left Island please!

[Through the Living Hope]

13 hours ago, Negative_Null said:

Honored to have you here as your first post. By southern mountains do you mean the ones on the pole continent?

Otherwise, looks like a fun faction. Thanks for joining!

Dang

Forgot to make a nation

I can at some point tomorrow or Tuesday probably make one

[Negative_Null They/Them]

21 minutes ago, IcedOutPenguin said:

Lower left Island please!

Any specific place?

 

11 minutes ago, Spark of Hope said:

Dang

Forgot to make a nation

I can at some point tomorrow or Tuesday probably make one

That works! My classes finish on Wednesday so I expect to start then or on Thursday

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

14 minutes ago, Negative_Null said:

Any specific place?

 

This one

[Lord Spirit he/him]

Hmm… I’m assuming this world is round? Meaning that me and penguin would actually be neighbors.

[Negative_Null They/Them]

3 hours ago, Lord Spirit said:

Hmm… I’m assuming this world is round? Meaning that me and penguin would actually be neighbors.

Good assumption!  Yes, the two sides of the map connect, and the continent at the bottom is round like Antarctica

[Through the Living Heir he/him]

On 4/12/2025 at 1:30 PM, Lord Spirit said:

Sounds fun! I’ll join. 
Sylvallia

Nation's Origin: a small plant that’s entirely covered in forest. Unfortunately, after thousands of years of peaceful living, a mysterious storm of fire came and burned down the great forest of Sylvallia. Seeking a new home, they used magic to travel to a new planet that they have began to settle on. 

National Colors: Bronze and Emerald

Nation's Government Type: Sylvallia is run by a council of chiefs. Each chief represents a different village. The council is lead by the Eagle chief. 

Nation's Faith and beliefs: Sylvallia has a nature based religion that prohibits the harming of plants or animals unless absolutely nessecary. 

Nation's Ruler: The great Eagle Chief 

Nation's Primary Race(s): Sylvallia population is comprised of Sylvallians (duh). Sylvallians are humanoid, but they have bark for skin and vines for hair. They do not need food or sleep, they gain energy from water and light. 
Nation's Total Population: relatively small, probably around 50,000

Magic or technology use: 

Some Sylvallians are born with the ability to “grow” a material known as Vallium. Vallium is an extremely versatile material that is light and strong. Vallium is slowly generated directly from the Sylvallians. It comes from their body and then shaped into what they want to make. Initially it’s thin and malleable, but the longer they keep going the thicker and more solid it gets. The structure and flexibility is somewhat dependent on how the creator wants it to be. It’s used to make clothes, shelter and pretty much anything Sylvallians need. (Kind of like plastic, but stronger cuz Magic.)

This means that despite not using wood, the Sylvallians are decently advanced. They are great architects and have perfected Growing to make detailed items.

 But they are behind in most other key ways. They do not like fire, and they only have basic tools. 

Some Sylvallians also have the power to sense and connect to nearby life. This is how they traveled to a new planet. The 100 strongest “Finders” combined their power to reach out and find a new life source. They found one and managed to send their people there, but almost all of the Finders died in the effort, leaving Sylvallia stranded with no way to return home.

Other information:  Sylvallians are peaceful by nature and have never had any criminals or wars. Essentially, they are very innocent and susceptible to be manipulated until they learn a thing or two. 

These guys will play off of my nation in very interesting ways… It depends upon whether biotech qualifies as heresy, but they might end up as either close allies or bitter enemies.

On 4/4/2025 at 3:37 PM, Negative_Null said:

Here's the map of the planet! Your scanners/magical senses show that the planet is most hot and humid, somewhat tropical in nature, with only a little bit of land close to the poles cold enough to have snow during the year. The planet also is surrounded by a ring system, similar to Saturn in our solar system

Hmm… maybe I should take a central but unimportant portion of ocean for my embassy. Where would I be close to several nations but not in the way? 

[Through the Living Shadow he/him]

On 4/4/2025 at 3:37 PM, Negative_Null said:

Hello all! I've resurrected myself back to the Shard after... whoah, way too long, and I'm back to the rp scene!

 We'll do sign ups here and then I'll probably make a new thread for the rp proper.

But! This is gonna look a little different. This is a Civ RP, where rather than playing as a character, you will be piloting a burgeoning nation. 

What Nation? Well that's the fun part. For your character I would like you to fill out a nation that comes to a new planet! Perhaps your old planet underwent a cataclysmic disaster so you escaped on a futuristic colony ship? Perhaps you discovered a magical portal and decided to send settlers through? Perhaps your god commanded you to find a new, purer land and gave you passage through their domain? Any options are open, any level of technology or magic (as long as you're fine chatting with me about balance). I hope to have 8-12 nations on our planet.

You will be able to take a certain number of actions (probably 4 but that might change over time) for the nation per "year," and those actions could be almost anything, from putting into place a recruitment policy for your army, sending out explorers, or sending an envoy to a neighboring country. If it helps, think of it as roleplaying as the country's leader/leaders and making those decisions for your country.

Maybe in way of example, I played a game similar to this before, and I began the game as a nation of  forest elves. I began by using my actions to research ancient magics and explore the world around me, then I began sending diplomats to the other nations I found, marshaling forces to defeat monsters or tyrants, and building up infrastructure. Some people playing really went into detailed Roleplaying (roleplaying the full conversations the diplomats had between them) and others just said "I sent a diplomat with these terms and with these instructions," same with war tactics etc.

If you're interested, fill this out and send it in the chat along with any questions. Before too long, I'll have a map made up so you can pick where you'll begin.
 

Nation's Origin: 
National Colors: 
Nation's Government Type: 
Nation's Faith and beliefs:
Nation's Ruler: 
Nation's Primary Race(s):
Nation's Total Population: 

Magic or technology use:

Other information:

 

Edit: Here's the map of the planet! Your scanners/magical senses show that the planet is most hot and humid, somewhat tropical in nature, with only a little bit of land close to the poles cold enough to have snow during the year. The planet also is surrounded by a ring system, similar to Saturn in our solar system

Oh

Oop

I shud do dis

Hang on…

U see that island that almost looks like a skewed T? Top right, the tip is ice ‘n’ stuff?

I wanna start at the leftmost point o’ dat placey place.

[THE SEER OF ALL genderfluid]

On 4/4/2025 at 1:37 PM, Negative_Null said:

Hello all! I've resurrected myself back to the Shard after... whoah, way too long, and I'm back to the rp scene!

 We'll do sign ups here and then I'll probably make a new thread for the rp proper.

But! This is gonna look a little different. This is a Civ RP, where rather than playing as a character, you will be piloting a burgeoning nation. 

What Nation? Well that's the fun part. For your character I would like you to fill out a nation that comes to a new planet! Perhaps your old planet underwent a cataclysmic disaster so you escaped on a futuristic colony ship? Perhaps you discovered a magical portal and decided to send settlers through? Perhaps your god commanded you to find a new, purer land and gave you passage through their domain? Any options are open, any level of technology or magic (as long as you're fine chatting with me about balance). I hope to have 8-12 nations on our planet.

You will be able to take a certain number of actions (probably 4 but that might change over time) for the nation per "year," and those actions could be almost anything, from putting into place a recruitment policy for your army, sending out explorers, or sending an envoy to a neighboring country. If it helps, think of it as roleplaying as the country's leader/leaders and making those decisions for your country.

Maybe in way of example, I played a game similar to this before, and I began the game as a nation of  forest elves. I began by using my actions to research ancient magics and explore the world around me, then I began sending diplomats to the other nations I found, marshaling forces to defeat monsters or tyrants, and building up infrastructure. Some people playing really went into detailed Roleplaying (roleplaying the full conversations the diplomats had between them) and others just said "I sent a diplomat with these terms and with these instructions," same with war tactics etc.

If you're interested, fill this out and send it in the chat along with any questions. Before too long, I'll have a map made up so you can pick where you'll begin.
 

Nation's Origin: 
National Colors: 
Nation's Government Type: 
Nation's Faith and beliefs:
Nation's Ruler: 
Nation's Primary Race(s):
Nation's Total Population: 

Magic or technology use:

Other information:

 

Edit: Here's the map of the planet! Your scanners/magical senses show that the planet is most hot and humid, somewhat tropical in nature, with only a little bit of land close to the poles cold enough to have snow during the year. The planet also is surrounded by a ring system, similar to Saturn in our solar system

Ooooo looks fun,

ill make this later

[ParaTulip fae/faer (declines as she/her)]

 

The Assemblages of Worms

Nation's Origin: Stranded Space Ship Crew

National Colors: Green, grey, blue

Nation's Government Type: "democratic contractual investiture"

Nation's Faith and beliefs: Maintainers of the Craft

The surviving crew are all part of the ship's self repair system.

Those who skillfully mend the living world are pious.

Where the fremen of Dune see God in the sandworm, the worms see God in their ships.

Nation's Ruler: They don't have a singular ruler. There are three executive offices that are appointed to half year terms by the legislature:

The chief of security manages affairs of both interstate relations and warfare.

The chief of laws manages internal security and acts as final arbitrar in the court system.

Finally, the Grand Cybenticist is charged and empowered to coordinate the various guilds to realize the economic objectives set by the legislature.

Nation's Primary Race(s): 

They are like the Lekgolo, or the worms that make up Hunters in Halo. Each independent body is actually a gestalt organism composed of hundreds to thousands individual lifefroms. They typically interact with the world using artificial exoskeletons.

For ease of imagination, the bodies in their planetbound civilization is somewhere on the spectrum of the the Keepers of Mass Effect and the extraterrestrials of District 9.

Nation's Total Population:

Millions of individuals,

~ 5000 working shell bodies.

Magic or technology use:

High technology use. Their origin as space faring people did not include things like FTL or planet destroying weapons.

Other information:

Where did their ship come from?

The ships that they are native to are like the vessel in Rendezvous with Rama by Arthur C. Clarke: It is a non-FTL museum and possibly habitat for multiple species. The worms are part of the ship that is incidentally sapient.

This does have existentially important meanings for these people: They exist to repair the ships. This is why they ship makers made them. They have spent so long existing in the ships that "good ship conditions" is a kind of theological question for them.

There is believed to be more than one ship and that they reproduce in ways like either bacteria or viruses, but the crash landing killed everyone onbroad with a strong understanding of that process.

Having crash landed is a huge crisis for them. It's as if the Black Death happened all at once. What it even means to be alive in a world after their ship crashed has created schisms in their society, which I'll explain elsewhere.

Also all of the guest aliens died. The worms aren't the least xenophobic historically, but considering they are already so different from humans. I don't want to also make this all even more complicated by adding more kinds of biologically distinct beings.

What is democratic contractual investiture ?

If you can imagine a version of dinect democracy where everyone is able to delegate and recall a kind of transferable democratic power at will.

So it's direct democracy, until someone is like "Hey, we vote the same way. Wanna trade who actually shows up to this place on a weekly basis?" or whatever then that's acceptable as are variations there in.

There's no districts nor a fixed number of voters. Rules on having a quorum ensure that a majority of the citizenry must be represented for a law to be binding.

I didn't come up with the name, but this always just felt like a fun idea to me.

Internal Divisions

The reactions to being on a planet with a dead ship vary among the worms. The instrumental goals of "acquire industrial power" and "preserve ourselves" unite the entire Assembly, but the end goals are multitudinous.

The first goal to take shape was the restoration plan. The ship could be revived by resuming functions and somehow getting out of the gravity well. The more radical proponents of this goal advocate expansion for the sake of resource extraction.

The counter proposal to this is the Harmony plan. These assembly members believe that the ship crashing into this specific planet means this planet is effectively the new ship.

There is also a syncretist position, which supposes that this planet has been chosen to be the material that is turned into more ships. This is a minor faction as it would require a lot of new technology and also it means confronting the questions about why the ships should exist.

 

Starting location:

 

[Through the Living Hope]

Forgot today 

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

is it possible to be a merchent guild thats kind of everywhere that trades with everyone and is mostly seafaring and has a navy which is sells of to the higest bidder during a war?

[Negative_Null They/Them]

1 hour ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

is it possible to be a merchent guild thats kind of everywhere that trades with everyone and is mostly seafaring and has a navy which is sells of to the higest bidder during a war?

It's possible to be anything, although you won't start with that kind of power right off the bat obviously 

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

3 hours ago, Negative_Null said:

It's possible to be anything, although you won't start with that kind of power right off the bat obviously 

of course... i'll make a character sheet in a little while then

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

This looks like fun! I joined the 17th Shard today so this is one of the first things I'm doing.

Nation's Origin: When Earth was overcome by global warming, humanity fled to the fledgling colonies on the moon. The number of people went from its former 9 billion to merely 10 million. After this catastrophe, humanity eventually recovered, but was split into many different factions. The descendants of those who eventually settled Europa, a moon of Jupiter, found a portal under the ice layer, which led to the RP world.
National Colors: #ffffff, #00aaff, #0088ee
Nation's Government Type: So this is a unique one. The nation has 1 leader for each of its departments and each leader has absolute control over that department. The military leader controls the military, the diplomacy leader controls diplomacy, the energy and infrastructure leader controls energy and infrastructure, and so on. Each leader serves for half a  Jovian year (2166 Earth days) before a new one is elected.
Nation's Faith and beliefs: They believe that working hard in life will make them one with the world and forever be a part of it. This is derived from the fact that they throw their dead into Europa's ocean, where they sink all the way to bottom of the 60 km depths. 
Nation's Ruler: Military: Onoua Relin, Diplomatic: Reau Cari, Infrastructure: Deris Kire, Education: Leuo Kire, Science: Sarci Pryme, Agriculture: Krye Reciou, Policing: Ashi Veroi, among others
Nation's Primary Race(s): Humans? They're mostly descended from modern-day Irish.
Nation's Total Population: 25 million

Magic or technology use: They have perfected the ability to hybridise animals, and have used this countless times. Populated Europa's oceans by crossing marine Earth life with cold-resistant bacteria is one of their major feats.

What kind of fauna does this RP world have? Is it Earth or completely different like Roshar?

As for starting position, I'll take the southern-most of the north-eastern islands.

[Through the Living Hope]

3 hours ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

of course... i'll make a character sheet in a little while then

Me too lol

It'll be nice to RP with you again!

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

Just now, Spark of Hope said:

Me too lol

It'll be nice to RP with you again!

it'll be nice to RP again soon. i though it might be nice to start with something newer. 

[Through the Living Hope]

Just now, RoyalBeeMage said:

it'll be nice to RP again soon. i though it might be nice to start with something newer. 

It might take a little over a month to get it up again due to someone’s schedule, but we have an Insanity Clinic spinoff Roy could come back in

[RoyalBeeMage he/him]

Just now, Spark of Hope said:

It might take a little over a month to get it up again due to someone’s schedule, but we have an Insanity Clinic spinoff Roy could come back in

uh yeah i would love to meet up with everyone back in the IC... could you ping me when its starting up again incase i miss it somehow.

[Through the Living Hope]

2 minutes ago, RoyalBeeMage said:

uh yeah i would love to meet up with everyone back in the IC... could you ping me when its starting up again incase i miss it somehow.

Yeah sure!

[Negative_Null They/Them]

Ok, as a summary! We have

@Dragonheir playing as a colony of the IISC (The Interstellar Intelligent Species Council), an interstellar diplomatic empire

@IcedOutPenguin playing as the Sapphire Kingdom, a Renaissance era kingdom governed by Sapphire the dragon, starting in the forests on the far western sub-continent

@SpiritOfWrath playing as the PPUNG (Pact for the Peace of the United Nations of Gorin), a cut off colony of a falling empire, starting on the westernmost island of the north east archipelago

@Lord Spirit playing as Sylvalia, a small naturalistic society of plant people, starting on the far eastern forest island

@BridgeBoi playing as Uritea, a unified kingdom with magic of teleportation

@Carcharias playing as the Dosuli, a scientific expedition gone wrong from a high tech and magically advanced society, starting in the mountains on the southeastern continent

@ParaTulip playing as the Assemblages of Worms, a space-born religion of worm colonies, starting on the far eastern plains island

@SprenOfKaladinSenseOfHumor playing as the Europans, a lost colony from Earth, adept in hybridising animals, starting on the southernmost island of the northeastern archipelago

@Spark of Hope and @RoyalBeeMage have also expressed interest in playing. @Dragonheir and @BridgeBoi have not yet picked a starting location. Did I get all of that right? Speak now or forever hold your peace

[IcedOutPenguin He/Him]

1 minute ago, Negative_Null said:

@IcedOutPenguin playing as the Sapphire Kingdom, a Renaissance era kingdom governed by Sapphire the dragon, starting in the forests on the far western sub-continent

 

Looks good!

[KaladinsSenseOfHumourSpren He/Him]

I'm going to assume that my entire nation is trapped on the RP world. What is the scaling on the map? Is this world Earth-sized?