Yea, I know B5 is dying, but this place seems to be semi-active, so I thought a few of you might still be left around for some comments. I'm working on a campaign based in the B5 universe, though one in a distant future.
The great burn has already occurred, and over the course of roughly 2,000 years, Rome succeeded in suppressing the knowledge that man had ever reached the stars at all. The Anla'shok continue to work in secret, molding humanity for a return to the stars, but for most of this time, technology was a taboo topic akin to blasphemy.
Gradually, this attitude lessened, and the Anla'shok managed to work their way into positions of power, using the knowledge they had access to and gradually incorporating it back into human society. The "modern" time is 2150 (2150 after the burn, though even now, many humans aren't aware of this), and humanity has made it back to space, but not the stars.
Technology was accelerated a bit by the Rangers on Earth, allowing humanity to focus on areas that were never achieved even pre-burn, such as biological, cybernetics and artificial intelligence. This was done partially to keep humans focused on the task at hand (no dependence on fossil fuels or planetary shortage of food/energy/etc led to a drastically lesser chance of planetary war), but also because the Anla'shok were aware of what has become of the galaxy since Earth fell.
_____
In the decades immediately preceding the burn, humanity became more and more isolationist, and it took its toll on the galaxy. Humans may well have not been one of the more technologically advanced races in the galaxy, but they were the glue that held things together. Without them, the Minbari gradually returned to their isolationist ways, and the rest of the IA, without the Humans and Minbari to mediate their disputes, fell apart in a swarm of disputes, conflicts, and all-out wars. Then the Drakh returned.
The Drakh had already mastered the art of the very large, with their use of massive city ships and Shadow tech planet killers, and the tactics largely failed. So, they decided to focus on the very small: small on a space-scale, that is. They adapted their cloning facilities to the Shadow biological ship technology, giving birth to entire generations of Drakh soldier ships, vessels smaller than typical fighters, but carrying just as much firepower, and produced them by the thousands.
Drakh city ships no longer carried millions of civilians, but hundreds of thousands of Drakh soldiers, capable of being deployed in space like an army from antiquity. Their size and speed made them difficult to target, and their vast numbers allowed them to overwhelm their larger targets, pecking away like a swarm of angry locusts until there was nothing left.
The Anla'shok stationed to the former EA territory chose to do the only thing they could: they severed the regions link to the beacon network and hunkered down. Most of the other races were involved in defending their own lands, many being pushed back to their homeworlds, abandoning colonies by the hundreds; they were in no position (and had no inclination) to assist anyone else. Humanity was on its own.
_____
The first part of the campaign is focused on a very local scale: no Drakh, most likely even the knowledge of it will be beyond the scope of the PCs to begin with: they have more immediate concerns. The Ch'lon and Koulani are still right on the EA border, and have made an occasional annoyance of themselves even though there is no hyperspace link any longer.
There are two elements inside EA territory. One is the remnants of humanity that were spared the great burn, having been moved to the inner colonies of Orion and Proxima shortly after Earth fell, they've carved out a small piece of their own. WHile this is also where the Anla'shok is based, these humans have become detached from their Earth heritage, most view the humans of Sol as no less alien than the Minbari, little more than a primitive backwater.
Over the centuries the Rangers based from here have changed as well, growing increasingly xenophobic, even rounding up the Minbari (mostly descendants of the Minbari Rangers who remained) and packing them into a concentration camp on an otherwise uninhabited planet in the Proxima system. Those Rangers who still aid Earth are mostly based in Sol at this point, either on Earth or Mars (which has been fully terraformed and colonized in this timeline).
The other are the natives of the Theta system. When Earth fell, those ships attached to IPX that were off-world returned to find the Sol system a glowing, radioactive ruin, and searched out an alternate home, and they chose the Theta system. Having displaced the EA presence there, these IPX employees (having been affected by Shadow influence, and again by the Drakh after the Shadow war) quickly dominated the populace, setting themselves up as God-kings, a ruling class. Today they're a spacefaring race, having also taken over the Ceti Gamma system, the loyalists have been moved there, while Theta II has become something of a slave colony.
Despite this, while the race which has come to call themselves the Ipixians (which started as a joke among the IPX ruling class and has been almost totally integrated at this point) has developed a hatred of their slavers, their ancient history also speaks of the original humans who treated them with respect. These ancient histories have become something of a prophecy, a tale of humans from beyond the Ipixian ruling class coming to Theta and freeing them.
_____
So yea, the bit with the enslaved Thetans and resentful humans was added in mostly as a twist, as I figured any PC group would immediately see a population of humans as likely allies, and a race of aliens utilizing Shadow tech as likely enemies.
So, mostly I'm just putting this out there, see if any of it brings anything to mind that you'd add, or perhaps some of it will be of interest to you in your own games. Comments are welcome, but for now I think this post is plenty long enough, so I'll shut up now
The great burn has already occurred, and over the course of roughly 2,000 years, Rome succeeded in suppressing the knowledge that man had ever reached the stars at all. The Anla'shok continue to work in secret, molding humanity for a return to the stars, but for most of this time, technology was a taboo topic akin to blasphemy.
Gradually, this attitude lessened, and the Anla'shok managed to work their way into positions of power, using the knowledge they had access to and gradually incorporating it back into human society. The "modern" time is 2150 (2150 after the burn, though even now, many humans aren't aware of this), and humanity has made it back to space, but not the stars.
Technology was accelerated a bit by the Rangers on Earth, allowing humanity to focus on areas that were never achieved even pre-burn, such as biological, cybernetics and artificial intelligence. This was done partially to keep humans focused on the task at hand (no dependence on fossil fuels or planetary shortage of food/energy/etc led to a drastically lesser chance of planetary war), but also because the Anla'shok were aware of what has become of the galaxy since Earth fell.
_____
In the decades immediately preceding the burn, humanity became more and more isolationist, and it took its toll on the galaxy. Humans may well have not been one of the more technologically advanced races in the galaxy, but they were the glue that held things together. Without them, the Minbari gradually returned to their isolationist ways, and the rest of the IA, without the Humans and Minbari to mediate their disputes, fell apart in a swarm of disputes, conflicts, and all-out wars. Then the Drakh returned.
The Drakh had already mastered the art of the very large, with their use of massive city ships and Shadow tech planet killers, and the tactics largely failed. So, they decided to focus on the very small: small on a space-scale, that is. They adapted their cloning facilities to the Shadow biological ship technology, giving birth to entire generations of Drakh soldier ships, vessels smaller than typical fighters, but carrying just as much firepower, and produced them by the thousands.
Drakh city ships no longer carried millions of civilians, but hundreds of thousands of Drakh soldiers, capable of being deployed in space like an army from antiquity. Their size and speed made them difficult to target, and their vast numbers allowed them to overwhelm their larger targets, pecking away like a swarm of angry locusts until there was nothing left.
The Anla'shok stationed to the former EA territory chose to do the only thing they could: they severed the regions link to the beacon network and hunkered down. Most of the other races were involved in defending their own lands, many being pushed back to their homeworlds, abandoning colonies by the hundreds; they were in no position (and had no inclination) to assist anyone else. Humanity was on its own.
_____
The first part of the campaign is focused on a very local scale: no Drakh, most likely even the knowledge of it will be beyond the scope of the PCs to begin with: they have more immediate concerns. The Ch'lon and Koulani are still right on the EA border, and have made an occasional annoyance of themselves even though there is no hyperspace link any longer.
There are two elements inside EA territory. One is the remnants of humanity that were spared the great burn, having been moved to the inner colonies of Orion and Proxima shortly after Earth fell, they've carved out a small piece of their own. WHile this is also where the Anla'shok is based, these humans have become detached from their Earth heritage, most view the humans of Sol as no less alien than the Minbari, little more than a primitive backwater.
Over the centuries the Rangers based from here have changed as well, growing increasingly xenophobic, even rounding up the Minbari (mostly descendants of the Minbari Rangers who remained) and packing them into a concentration camp on an otherwise uninhabited planet in the Proxima system. Those Rangers who still aid Earth are mostly based in Sol at this point, either on Earth or Mars (which has been fully terraformed and colonized in this timeline).
The other are the natives of the Theta system. When Earth fell, those ships attached to IPX that were off-world returned to find the Sol system a glowing, radioactive ruin, and searched out an alternate home, and they chose the Theta system. Having displaced the EA presence there, these IPX employees (having been affected by Shadow influence, and again by the Drakh after the Shadow war) quickly dominated the populace, setting themselves up as God-kings, a ruling class. Today they're a spacefaring race, having also taken over the Ceti Gamma system, the loyalists have been moved there, while Theta II has become something of a slave colony.
Despite this, while the race which has come to call themselves the Ipixians (which started as a joke among the IPX ruling class and has been almost totally integrated at this point) has developed a hatred of their slavers, their ancient history also speaks of the original humans who treated them with respect. These ancient histories have become something of a prophecy, a tale of humans from beyond the Ipixian ruling class coming to Theta and freeing them.
_____
So yea, the bit with the enslaved Thetans and resentful humans was added in mostly as a twist, as I figured any PC group would immediately see a population of humans as likely allies, and a race of aliens utilizing Shadow tech as likely enemies.
So, mostly I'm just putting this out there, see if any of it brings anything to mind that you'd add, or perhaps some of it will be of interest to you in your own games. Comments are welcome, but for now I think this post is plenty long enough, so I'll shut up now
