Skip to content

Sides - who lives here

Sides are your factions - the recurring characters of the galaxy. Each one is a character sheet: what they look like on the map, where they live, what they value, and what kind of people they are.

These used to be called clans

They were always sides - the universe spawned them as sides from the first day. The private word bought us a private kind of record and a second vocabulary for standing and home systems, so it is gone. ## Clans and Clan: still parse, and nothing you have written needs changing.

Add a ## Sides chapter with two entries:

## [Sides](sides)

### [The Lantern Combine](lantern)
---
Color: #ffcc44
Character: trader
Disposition: neutral
Home: -4, 2
Values: honest 40, generous 30, peaceful 20
Flies: Arvonian
---
Convoy families who keep the freight lanes lit. Fair dealers with long
memories for a kept promise - and longer ones for a broken cargo contract.

### [The Red Veil](veil)
---
Color: #cc2244
Character: pirate
Disposition: foe
Home: 5, -4
Values: violent 40, fearsome 30, selfish 20
Flies: Torgoth
---
Corsairs of the outer dark. They take what the light forgets, and they
respect exactly one thing: a captain more dangerous than they are.

Reading the fact sheet as a writer

  • Color - the side's color on the galaxy map. Any web color like #cc2244.
  • Archetype - the side's genre role, one word: military, trader, settler, mercenary, pirate, or cult. This flavors their chatter, their stations, and their fleets.
  • Disposition - neutral (will talk) or foe (shoots first). A foe side can still be won over in play - through reputation, ceasefires, even alliance. You are writing their opening attitude, not their fate.
  • Home - their home system as map coordinates, column, row. The galaxy is a grid of systems centered on 0, 0, where the players start; a home at 5, -4 is five columns and four rows away in the other direction. Give sides some distance from each other (and from 0, 0) so their territories read on the map.

  • Values - the side's moral leanings, as traits with weights. These are the seven built-in trait pairs a captain is measured on:
    honest / liar fearsome / cowardly
    peaceful / violent generous / selfish
    kind / cruel resourceful / by-the-book
    intellectual / foolish

    Pick two or three poles that define the side and weight them (they need not add to 100). A side warms to captains who act like it - the Veil respects fearsome deeds, the Combine respects honest ones. This one line is the engine of the whole reputation game, and it is pure characterization.

  • Flies - the ships they fly: one race (Torgoth), an even mix (Kralien, Torgoth), or weighted (60% Kralien, 40% Arvonian). Races: Kralien, Torgoth, Arvonian, Ximni. Skip it for a random mix.

In play

Your sides now hold home systems, their colors mark the map, their fleets fly their colors, and every captain has a personal standing with each of them that moves with how the captain behaves.

Next: Jobs - the work they offer.