Sandbox-Scarcity:NewPlayerPublic
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| Character Starters | Getting Started · New Player Lore Guide · Character Creation · Jobs | |
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This is a new player's summary of the totality - or at least, as much as we can summarize quickly - of the Aurora server's most essential lore.
This is the first in a series of multiple guides connected to Guides/Character Creation. Once you're finished reading this, you are more than equipped with the knowledge necessary to create your character using that guide!
Below is recommended reading if you are new to the server!
Welcome to Aurora Lore!
Hello and Welcome! Aurora Lore is vast, and trying to get into it as a new player can feel overwhelming at times. Therefore to try and assist those new to the setting we've developed a series of pages that will assist with that issue, and this is one of them! This page is the shortest possible summary to the setting that still accomplishes the goal mentioned previously of helping new players get acquainted with the server's lore and help them understand the ins and outs of the Orion Spur in the 25th century and its history. After reading this page, and the page for the planet you choose for your characters background from those presented at the bottom, you'll know enough to start playing without issue.
The Aurora Setting
It is 2467 C.E. and much of the Orion Spur has been explored. The spur is our wider setting, encompassing not only the medium of the game but also everything "happening" elsewhere. Our server takes place aboard a spaceship known as the SCCV Horizon, which is owned and operated by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate, an economic cartel made up of eight different megacorporations that combined control a majority of the spur's economic activity. It is not an equal organization, or one that all the megacorporations save for the leader joined willingly; it is dominated and led by the most powerful megacorporation ever known, NanoTrasen. Miranda Trasen is the CEO of NanoTrasen and the woman responsible for forming this cartel she now also leads; it was she who forced the others into line, using whatever coercive means she could as leverage. Luckily for her, the company she inherited came with a monopoly on the single most precious resource in the entire setting; Phoron.
Phoron
Discovered in 2352 by NanoTrasen, Phoron is a typically purple element that is only known to occur naturally (in economically significant quantities, anyway) in a few locations throughout an entire galaxy, either as a crystal or gas, and it is not an overstatement to say it is the most important element in the setting. This is because phoron in its elemental state, as a solid, is a naturally occurring room temperature superconductor and the only room temperature superconductor known to exist. It is a single resource that underpinned an entire century of rapid economic and technological growth, to the extent it's now a necessary material to maintain the economic and technological level of the Spur. Running out would be getting thrown backsliding more than a century.
A good way to visualize what this means for your average resident of the Spur: imagine that in the modern world we only have a few possible sources of silicon, a resource we rely on for the modern world to function, and there is nothing we can substitute it with if we run out. Moreover, if we ran out, we would go back to the technological and economic level of the early 1900s. Ontop of that - 99.9% of all the silicon is owned by a single corporation, which has been unsustainably mining it for over a century so now we're running out - and that's basically the situation of the Spur currently.
The Phoron Scarcity is an ongoing shortage of the precious resource primarily caused by over-consumption and unsustainable mining practices. Again, this is a material that is necessary to maintain the economic and technological level of the Spur, essentially all that growth since it was discovered, and has no replacements. It is a very dire situation, and due to its importance, it is still being actively mined, meaning that as every day passes, there is less phoron to go around, causing the situation to only worsen with time. There have been many attempts to find a solution, the most famous of which being Project Violet Dawn, a project undertaken by the Solarian Government in an attempt to find a synthetic alternative on Mars. Its fame comes from the fact that it failed so catastrophically that it quite literally set most of Mar's atmosphere on fire, burned down half the planet, turned the once red hue of the planet in the night sky to purple, causing the deaths of billions of Solarian Citizens. There has been some success in terms of finding new deposits, but they are merely bandaids on a bleeding artery, stabilizing the situation for a few months until they eventually run out.
What exactly will happen as a result of this scarcity is currently unknown, as Aurora's setting is a continuous story that develops in real time. For more Information; join the lore discord [link]
The SCCV Horizon
As mentioned previously, the SCCV Horizon is the spaceship that can be found in-game. It is owned and operated by the Stellar Corporate Conglomerate under Miranda Trasen, so all player characters are working for the organization(s) that caused the current catastrophic situation in the first place! Characters can pick to work for any of the eight corporations that make up the Conglomerate; however, each corporation is restricted to certain departments. The IC reason you are still working for and wearing the uniform of your parent company despite working on an SCC asset is that you are contracted out. Many jobs will have specific qualifications that can be found on their job pages. Additionally, the baseline qualifications to work aboard the Horizon can be found here: Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Occupation Qualifications.
Lore, your character, and the Workplace
This section is entirely dedicated to trying to summarize what all this lore means in-game, in an easy-to-digest, informal way. For any new players, or returning players who have been away for a large period of time, the modern-day setting of Aurora is extremely vast, with hundreds of thousands of words dedicated to lore alone. This can be incredibly overwhelming, especially given incorrect assumptions about the expectations of the server, so this section will also serve to soothe minds. This section will also obviously primarily discuss how lore and your character interact.
Simply put - everyone started on the server in the same situation you are now - every player, member of staff, and leader of staff teams were once in the same position when it comes to lore. However the best way to learn is to PLAY THE GAME and read wiki pages as through game interactions certain things catch your attention, desire to learn about, or similar. Don't try reading all the lore about a faction at once.
The Workplace
Our wokrplace (the Horizon) is dominated by the Megacorporations. This goes over their departments and general barebones descriptions. Will be expanded, slightly.
Stellar Corporate Conglomorate: A cartel made up of all the other Corporations, headed by NanoTrasen. Works in Command and Command Support.
NanoTrasen: The most powerful corporation known to man, basically entirely dedicated to Phoron. Works in Science, Medical, Service.
Hephaestus Industries: The Industrial Titan, responsible for most of the spur's industrial output. Marketed as a big family. Works in Engineering and Operations.
Zavodskoi Interstellar: The Merchant of Death, or Military Industrial Complex personified for every nation; freakish obsession with being professional. Works in Security, Science, and Engineering.
Zeng-Hu Pharmacuticals: Medical supplies, treatment, and everything in between; weirdly trans-humanist and likes prosthetics a lot. Works in Medical, and Science.
Idris Incorporated: The bank, it's security, and the luxuries to spend stored money on; very secretive and almost mafia-esque. Works in Service, and Security.
Private Military Contracting Group: A collection of PMCs from all over the Spur. Works in Security, and Medical
Orion Express: Shipping to sketchy locations, and minimum wage workers. Works in Operations and Service.
Characters
The general position of the playerbase at large, and more importantly, the staff team is that THERE IS NO EXPECTATION FOR YOU TO KNOW ANY OF THE LORE BEYOND THE BAREBONE BASICS DESCRIBED HERE, AND THE BAREBONE BASICS OF YOUR ORIGIN BEFORE HOPPING INTO A ROUND as a new player. If someone tries to "lorecheck" you (a term and action I hate) - normally done by bringing up a specific event and/or piece of lore that your character (in their eyes) should know - you can just say you're not familiar with it, and ask them to explain it to you. You can also say at the same time in LOOC that you're a newer player, and would appreciate them not expecting you to know specific events, but would love to learn more. Be wary that this stuff is all IC - and therefore subject to character bias when learning and similar - for a non-biased source, always use the wiki or ask someone with a purple name.
Secondly, unless you are acting in bad faith - defined as acting with intentional dishonesty, violating the basic expectations of dignified human interaction, and harmful motives - staff will be incredibly understanding. Again, everyone here was once where you are. If you have any questions regarding the lore, new players, and expectations, any questions at all you are free to reach out to any staff, such as the current Loremaster - Triogenix - with any questions, concerns, or things you'd like clarified/just want to talk about; but please keep it specific to that staff members wheelhouse.
Lastly, for new players, the wider setting and lore don’t have to mean anything more than what you want it to mean, so the recommendation is that it means little to nothing. 90% of the time lore is a rationale for why x thing exists in game, or why we're doing a special event arc. Your experience ingame will not be made worse by not understanding the lore, so GO AND PLAY is the best possible advice you can be given. If you keep playing, everything else will start falling into place after a few rounds, you’ll read a few wiki pages, and a week or two in, you'll have a solid grasp on the setting.
Recommended Starter Planets
Callisto - Callisto is a settled moon in orbit of Jupiter, and the most populated of the Jovian moons. It is the Alliance's single largest port, a feat accomplished by the massive Warp Gate Network it has in orbit, which was originally designed back in the late 2300s. Since then Callisto has been a hub of commerce, and is the de-facto port for the entire Sol system, one of the richest and most populated systems in the entire spur. As a result, Callisto is dominated by sprawling urban topography and is one of the most developed planets in the alliance. The culture of both the planet as a whole and the individual districts is very easy to pick up, and the page as a whole is fairly short. If you want to read the least amount, this is the planet for you.
Biesel - Biesel is a temperate, oxygen-rich planet colonised in the mid-2100s, therefore making it one of the first. It is the capital of the Republic of Biesel and of the Tau Ceti system in general. One of the most populated planets in the Orion Spur, Biesel is one of the economic hearts of the known galaxy and boasts a large amount of urban development and resource richness - primarily in Phoron. It is also where the influence of NanoTrasen and the SCC is at it's strongest. The issue is, as it was also our setting for five-ish years, so alot of development occurred with it. If you're interested in reading a fair amount of lore, love façade democracy, and also spreading the light of liberty, then this is the planet for you.
Xanu Prime - The shimmering and vibrant planet of Xanu Prime (pronounced Ksa-noo), is the beating heart of the Coalition of Colonies. In nearly all ways, economic, political, and cultural, Xanu Prime holds almost unmatched influence over the rest of the Coalition. It is a cosmopolitan and multicultural hub where nearly anyone from across the Orion Spur can be found, a cornerstone not just in the Coalition but in the galactic community as a whole, and home to a thriving culture and democratic tradition which, along with the dedication and hard work of its citizens, has cemented its position of leadership and wealth which it currently enjoys. The primary page also tops out as the second longest page on the wiki, and it's one of three. If you're interested in super indepth lore, reading a ton, the frontier spirit, and multiculturalism, pick Xanu Prime.
From this point, you are again encouraged to move onto Guides/Character Creation provided you're at a loss for what to do.