[OOC][PLOT] Galaxy Building (Where we make Magrathea look like small potatoes)

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, I wanted to put a big RED mark on this one, because this will probably be even more important in guiding how the overall story builds up.

Basically, this thread will be all about planning out when what big (and little) political powers show up, how they affect everything, and how they wind up fitting into the big picture once every settles down (somewhat :V ).

Right now, some of the big ones that I can think of off the top of my head are:

• The Crystal Moon Empire
  
• The New UN (Along with their Spacy)
  
• The Empire of Jyurai
  
• The Humankind Abh Empire
  
• Pretty much everything from Star Trek
  
• Star Wars (though largely they won't be too hard to fit in as they have an entire galaxy of their own.  )
  
• The Gamilon Empire and Comet Empire
  

I'd add in the antagonists from Voltron, but Planet Doom is just one planet... although I can see how they might make a minor mess of things before everyone ganged up on them and curb stomped their asses.

So, what else have you guys got?

[robkelk]

Academy City functions as an independent city-state, complete with border checks. Their technology heads into pseudoscience - they can build a space elevator that's anchored in Japan - and they have espers. They have an uneasy relationship with religious bodies, many of which can hold their own against Academy City because magic. Once either side of this cold war gets their hands on FTL of any sort, there's no question that they'll be using it. Add Academy City to the same list as Planet Doom if they aren't neutralized earlier.

And there's at least one ship filled with Predators out there. (Oh, dear - I just imagined Borged Predators.)

On the good guys' side, there's Moonbase Alpha, which is just one base... but it's a fully-functioning, comfortable base on the Moon at a time when the Crystal Millennium has only ruins to work with on-site. Usagi will be advised to make sure they're friends with her.

[robkelk]

How many of these films do we want in the Metacontinuity?

[Labster]

Usagi will be advised to make sure they're friends with her.

Speaking of befriending, didn't someone plan to bring the TSAB in along with Nanoha?  Or is that not happening now?

From that list, well, Buckaroo Banzai, of course.  We can always use more lectroids.  And Rocky Horror... heheh no... unless someone wants to cross it with City Hunter, lol.  Stargate was another one from our cast list that hasn't materialized yet, but would be very useful.

I'm not entirely sure what to do with Mars.  There's a lot of options, including the one where some of my cast come from.  I considered Martian Successor Nadesico as an addition to my apartments, but after rewatching, it wasn't really giving me any ideas, but maybe in space that would be different.

How would time travel stories work in this universe?  Did the universe even technically exist before 2016?  Like is it the lowest energy state of spacetimes, akin to the end of time in Chrono Trigger.  Or did an initial reality get written to the coredump, and then other people start getting added to this baby universe?

[Bob Schroeck]

And speaking of "baby universe", how big is it, really? Obviously larger than our solar system, but all the aliens so far (IIRC) are from our galaxy. Is there anything else in any of the donor universes worth saving, or is it all in the Milky Way? (And if so, does that mean we have billions of years of starlight on its way here, with no stars to have generated it?)

[robkelk]

Unless we have access to intergalactic craft, we're confined to the Milky Way no matter how old this universe is.

Since there was some distaste at having a Lensman Arms Race, we probably won't have Lensman (or Skylark, which was even worse) - and "Doc" Smith is the only writer that I can recall who put fast intergalactic travel into his stories.

(And if so, does that mean we have billions of years of starlight on its way here, with no stars to have generated it?)

I am reminded of a trope.

The Jerkass Gods approach: Yeah, the evidence is there. But God or Satan placed it there as a Mind Screw or a test.
...
The Lampshade Hanging approach: God did put the ancient-looking dinosaur skeletons there and everything, but didn't mean anything by it. He was simply decorating His creation!

[Labster]

I didn't mean to imply that the evidence was wrong, just that the current universe itself didn't exist until the segfault.  Then an entire universe was written to the coredump universe with every particle's quantum state; the people living inside would have no way of knowing that they were a copy of an existing universe.  I think it's fair to say that Yggdrasil's code can know quantum state without measuring it.  And then state from another universe was written on top, and then another, and then you eventually get a Metacontinuity.  But the reality beginning to exist in this way isn't a deception, or even wrong.  It's just that most time travel effects would raise ENOTIMELINE on Yggdrasil, because the memory describing the previous timelines is at a different memory address, that of the base timeline.  (It's a handled exception, of course, and not a segfault, because they all decided to go over the time travel code very closely to make sure it doesn't die.  No one understands how it works, though.)

The other alternative is that this just happened to be reality where everyone got placed.  It's because it was somehow a "base" reality, or maybe just by matching an error code to a setting.  As if #define EREALITYBREAK 17741 and somehow that turned into goto midgard[17741];, and all sorts of stuff got rewritten there.  So the timeline itself exists, but does not represent the history that all of the newcomers to the reality remember.

I think those are the simplest case, unless you want to deal with the past and future being rewritten.

In theory, Yamato can travel inside the Local Group, as can the various Galaxy Express lines.  The thing is, galaxies are so unimaginably large that having more than one in a story often just isn't necessary.

Also, Baby Universe.

[Black Aeronaut]

Academy City will be fairly easy to deal with.  Just tell Emperor Azusa that they've taken an unhealthy interest in his daughters.  You'll be able to count on one hand how many seconds until his 1st Generation Tree Ship shows up, along with his Wives ships in their combined form.  (Yeah, the trees that bonded to those two are like conjoined twins, and as such their hulls can be combined.  So even though they're both 2nd Gen Trees, they are, for all practical purposes, more powerful than a 1st Gen when in their combined state.)

Same thing with the Yauta.  Gang up on their asses and force those ass holes to play nice.  Or else we remind them why the 'Soft Meat' is considered a far more dangerous prey than the 'Hard Meat'.  (They'll probably find a human with an X-Ray Laser/M-AM Gun in his right arm, a penchant for fucking with the odds, and able to beat them at their own game of hide-and-seek to be pretty fucking compelling all on his own.)

I did indeed forget about TSAB.  They will be an issue as well, but the good news is that they'll be largely on our side.  Do we play with the idea that each Administered and Unadministered world are actually parallel versions of each other or that 'Traveling the Dimensional Sea' is basically their version of Hyperdrive?

Stargate...  I left that aside because it's largely my youngest brother's thing, but he's honestly not cut out for this project.  He really is the way he is in the writing.  So if anyone else wants it, go for it.  That, or we can have them just show up in Season 2, which will be sensible if we want access to Atlantis.

Regard our night sky changing - not anytime soon.  By and large, a lot of the source materials out there make use of our own galaxy as is.  Though there will certainly be some changes to the individual systems, like there being additional versions of Earth parked in the Earth-Sol L-Points.

Extra-galactically speaking, the Star Wars Galaxy is gonna be practically next door, as will the Pegasus Galaxy from SG: Atlantis.

To bridge that gap....   Well....

I got an idea, but I dunno how you guys will like it.

Y'all remember the game, Borderlands?

Apparently in that setting, Pandora is in the armpit between 'Nowhere' and 'Lost' in the midst of SIX GALAXIES.  The only reason it sticks out is because of the fabled Vault that is said to exist with the technology of a lost civilization that was far in advance of the current one that has travel, commerce, and communications between SIX GALAXIES.

How do they manage it all?  Well.  I'd imagine that it looks a lot like politics here on Earth, only on a grand intergalactic scale, only the 'Nations' are actually more like other 'UNs' from different parts of different galaxies.  And each one of those itself is again another study of Earth politics, only on a lesser scale.

Upshot?  It'll give use plenty of places to put other stuff that shows up, as well as an intergalactic travel system we can pretty much handwave however we want to.  Downside?  SIX FRICKEN GALAXIES.

Thoughts?

[robkelk]

Academy City will need some subtlety to take out. As an analogy, what's needed here is something like sniping a half-dozen people in the Sistine Chapel without disturbing the Pope. (No, wait - that's exactly what we'll need to do to take out the worst elements of Necessarius the "Roman Orthodox" church.) The vast majority of Academy City is made up of good and decent people; it's the people in charge that are the problem. Brute force will do more harm than good in this case - no sending in Light Hawk Wings where a Starlight Breaker is better indicated. (Yes, I did just call Nanoha the subtle option. Scary, isn't it?)

My take on the Nanohaverse: If all of the administered and unadministered worlds were dimensional analogues of each other, then the TSAB wouldn't need to build spacecraft. Since they do have spacecraft - the Arthura is normal-space-capable - some of those worlds need to be elsewhere in space.

If we're bringing in more Earths, we'll need a half-dozen in a rosette pattern for a stable system - each Earth would be following the Earth in its L4 point and leading the Earth in its L5 point. The usual solutions assume much smaller masses in the Lagrangian points; if you want equal masses, you have to keep going and populate the points all around the entire circle. Or so I'm told. That gives us six inhabited worlds to play with just in the Solar system.

(I could see the Megami sorting people amongst six Earths according to their tech level, magic level, or something else similar so that people only need to deal with similar paradigms until they leave their new home planets. Yes, Evangelion, Aria, and Sailor Moon are sufficiently close in settings that it's reasonable they'd end up on the same Earth, if you compare them to Lodoss, Slayers, and Order of the Stick. Or we can just say "the first Earth is for the earliest displacees, and the other five are where cultures started getting sorted by broad type." We could have a sword-and-sorcery world, a post-apocalypse world, and so on.)

[Labster]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Klemperer_rosette

Six is the most stable number.  I think once they're added, people will notice right away the new blue-colored planets in the sky that don't appear to move at all.  Rough guess based on comparing Earth's albedo (0.29) to Venus' (0.75) and similarish radius and distance (angles when you can actually see Venus at night), and alternate Earths would probably be dimmer than Venus or Jupiter, but brighter than Saturn and Mars (typically).

I'm not sure how stable the configuration is when you add in six Lunas, too.  The moon is pretty large in mass in comparison to Earth.  Anyone have modeling software?  I suspect the configuration is unstable once you add Jupiter in too, but that's just a guess.  You might be able to throw a couple more Earths into separate orbits, especially if you made some retrograde.  Apparently six is the limit of Hill spheres in the habitable zone, but not all points are equally habitable.  It might be safer to put a gas giant in Mars' orbit and throw a few Earths around that, tidal forces and reflected light from the giant would heat up that part of the orbit.

Actually if you seriously want to know more, read this guy's series on The Ultimate Solar System.

And I hope one of them isn't Mondas.

Did someone mention Slayers?  I've had this in my notes file forever:

"I saw her use the card, and I realized, whoa, magic is real!" Tomo enthused.

"Sure seems that way," Yomi agreed.

"So, hold my beer and watch this!"  Tomo passed Yomi a bottle of Ramune.

"Oh boy."
 
Tomo raised her arms dramatically towards the ocean, and began chanting, "Darkness beyond twilight, crimson beyond blood -- guh!"

Yomi whapped Tomo on the head, hard.  "For crying out loud, no evil magic!"

"Waaaa that hurt."

"I don't want you summoning an Elder God.  If magic is real and fiction is real: just have some goddamn sense Tomo!"

Tomo mumbled, "Elder God.  That spell wouldn't even work unless Shabra—"

"Huh?"

"Maybe that was a dumb idea," Tomo blushed.

Yomi stared down at Tomo and blinked a couple of times, entirely taken aback.  About ten seconds later, "Of course it was a dumb idea.  Geez."

[Rajvik]

BA is right that Academy City is easy to deal with, i think me and my group would be able to handle things there without anyone being the wiser,

"Mal, why are you dressed like that?" Inara asked as she looked at the ships captain.

"James has a plan," he answered securing the strap that held his pistol in place. "All he needs is me, Jayne and River but he's also taking Ryoji and Katsuragi for insurance. He's providing the weaponry through some contacts of his and we'll use Serenity for transport leaving Zoe and Wash to keep an eye on her."

"Where are you going?" the companion asked.

"Academy City," Jayne replied entering the room. "Have to take care of some problems before they become problems for the Mikasa's."

Inara quirked an eyebrow at that and then asked, "How can I help."

[robkelk]

Yeah, that's the way to crack this particular nut.

[Black Aeronaut]

@Rajvik: Lemme know if you need some heavy artillery.  We can all just hang out with the others at the Serenity while the main group goes and has fun.


Oh, I just stumbled across something interesting in that wikipedia link listing sci-fi movies.

One the the films in that listing is Aelita: Queen of Mars.

Sound familiar to anyone?

What really made my eyes bug out, though, is how that title plays into the events in the third installment of the Battle Angel Saga, which tells of Yoko's childhood and how she and Erica came to become Kunstlers.  I won't spoil it for you guys, but you can find it on Mangadex here: https://mangadex.org/title/13886/gunnm-mars-chronicle

Anyhow, I think it may also be a good idea to set aside another Mars so we have at least two - we can do a Blue Mars and a Red Mars.

Red Mars would be a true planet of the God of War - here be the people of Barsoom and the transhuman dystopia - both the cyber punks and the road warriors.

Blue Mars can be an amalgamation of Aqua and other terraformed versions of Mars.

Oh.  And what about Battlestar Galactica?  I can imagine that things would get pretty hairy with TWO continuities at the same time.  Though I think that once Starbuck and Starbuck got over it, they'd regard each other as the twin sibling they never had. 

[robkelk]

We really need to start a Working Notes page on the wiki for storming Academy City - take that discussion out of this thread. I'll do that later, when I have access to my notes at home.

As for the two BSGs, I'd be more inclined to ship Starbuck/Starbuck than treat them as long-lost siblings...

[Rajvik]

Nah, Academy City is going to be so quiet no one will know it happened until they find the bodies. Plan B is until they hear the gunfire, Plan C, well I think I have a tungsten telephone pole around here somewhere.

[Norgarth]

>Oh. And what about Battlestar Galactica? I can imagine that things would get pretty hairy with TWO continuities at the same time. Though I think that once Starbuck and Starbuck got over >it, they'd regard each other as the twin sibling they never had. Big Grin

Meanwhile the Apollos are commiserating over there being two of them now.

Though the question for nBSG is when in the timeline are they from? Before New Caprica? After? Near the end? Near the Beginning?

**
Another thought concerning Meta-Continuity: Comic Book universes. Marvel comics, DC, Image, MCU, DC TV series, DC Movie-verse(s), New England Comics (The Tick etc), Archie comics, The X-Men movies, etc. Then there are now defunct imprints, like Amalgam, Malibu's old Ultraverse (well, I guess that's technically a marvel reality now...) or Crossgen

Supers showing up are gonna attract attention. Capes, good or bad, are gonna be flying around trying to figure out WTF happened, and if multiple verse are in stuck in the same area, we could see Hero vs, Hero vs Villain, or Villain vs Villain easily (the odds of battle of course go up if we add Worm 's Parahumans into the mix, although we'll probable have people running around who can deal with Scion at least). Heh, and we can add the Incredibles to that list too. And Sky High. and Zoom (and thinking of Tim Allen brings to mind Galaxy Quest...I'm gonna stop before I wander any _further_ down these tangents)

[robkelk]

I've started off a page for the Academy City tangent here. For once, I thought of a perfect story title: The Academy City Job

Rajvik and Black Aeronaut, have at it...

[robkelk]

>Oh.  And what about Battlestar Galactica?  I can imagine that things would get pretty hairy with TWO continuities at the same time.  Though I think that once Starbuck and Starbuck got over >it, they'd regard each other as the twin sibling they never had.  Big Grin

Meanwhile the Apollos are commiserating over there being two of them now.

Though the question for nBSG is when in the timeline are they from?  Before New Caprica? After? Near the end? Near the Beginning?

**
Another thought concerning Meta-Continuity: Comic Book universes.   Marvel comics, DC, Image, MCU, DC TV series, DC Movie-verse(s), New England Comics (The Tick etc), Archie comics, The X-Men movies, etc.   Then there are now defunct imprints, like Amalgam, Malibu's old Ultraverse (well, I guess that's technically a marvel reality now...) or Crossgen

Supers showing up are gonna attract attention.  Capes, good or bad, are gonna be flying around trying to figure out WTF happened, and if multiple verse are in stuck in the same area, we could see Hero vs, Hero vs Villain, or Villain vs Villain easily (the odds of battle of course go up if we add Worm 's Parahumans into the mix, although we'll probable have people running around who can deal with Scion at least).  Heh, and we can add the Incredibles to that list too.  And Sky High.  and Zoom (and thinking of Tim Allen brings to mind Galaxy Quest...I'm gonna stop before I wander any _further_ down these tangents)

Ah, yes - so far, only the writers and Bob have access to the wiki. A snippet from when Space:1999 shows up in the Metacontinuity:

"Miss Mizuno, you'll need a spacesuit out there."

"No, I won't. Mercury Star Power, Make-Up!"

Koenig and Carter just stared.

"I forgot, your story never had my story in it. Sorry. I should have warned you."

"Smart and gorgeous and a superhero. Too bad you aren't closer to my age," Carter commented.

"The accepted term is 'magical girl,' Mr. Carter. And please don't say things like that around my boyfriend." Ami smiled.

Koenig chuckled. "Smart, gorgeous, and taken."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" But Alan was smiling at John when he said that.

So, yeah - we've already got supers.

[Black Aeronaut]

Whew! Glad to see I really kicked over the anthill here.

I'll get back to this as soon as I'm done driving for the night, then we'll go ahead and get things hashed out.

I can already see we're gonna have to work from the inside out here, so let's prioritize that way. Start with our local areas, then the rest of Earth, then Sol system, Milky Way, and finally extra-galactic.

[Norgarth]

So, yeah - we've already got supers.

*nods* But I was thinking more widespread cases, colourfully costumed people running/swinging/flying thru major cities, interacting with the public (and each other)

Magical Girls tend to be less blatant about their presence

[Black Aeronaut]

Okay, lessee.

Rajvik: Rods From God should be your final resort. Benjamin and the Alamo City Wrecking Crew, on the other hand... Sure, there'll be collateral damage, but it won't be anything the city can't recover from. Tungsten Telephone Poles, though... That will level the entire city.

One other item I wanted to add is Worm's Brockton Bay. I think it'd be right at home nestled between Gotham City and Bludhaven.

Which brings us to DC and Marvel.

I think we're gonna have to pick-and-choose here. Marvel, for the most part, I would go with the Cinematic Universe, but which version of X-Men we go with is up for grabs. Movieverse X-Men I'm kinda 'eh' on if only because of the messed up BS in the last movie. Besides, I don't like the idea that this company stopped mutants from being born by lacing the entire world's food supply with a virus. Really, if that is the case, then how did the get to the food of isolated villages in place like Africa or the islands in the Pacific? It just falls flat on its face.

ANYHOW... We'll have to figure out which continuity to use for X-Men, because I know there's several.

As for DC... Just not their Cinematic Universe. Really, I wish we could use the reimagining of the DC Universe in Chris Dee's Cat Tales, but it's not popular enough to support the 'most memetically popular' rule. Any ideas?

The other comic book stuff I'm willing to declare fair game because most of it hasn't been rebooted over and over and over again like DC and Marvel has. Though The Tick will have three versions: Comic Books, Animated TV Series, and Live Action Series. We'll have to pick one.

As for BSG and nBSG... I'm a bit shaky on that. Part of me wants to make it some we can go into the Colonies guns blazing to counter the Cylon Offensive, but that would be contingent on us knowing they were there, and knowing that shit was about to go down. We'll probably have to settle for coming in just after Ragnar Anchorage in nBSG, and the equivalent in BSG.

However, what we can do is throw them both together in the same space. This will confuse the hell out of the Cylons as suddenly there's two groups of them, and they're gonna be spending precious time challenging each other. Meanwhile, the non-networked Battlestars from BSG are going to be like "Any port in a storm!" and immediately go to aid their networked cousins from nBSG, buying THEM the time they need to clear out the virus and go to work.

This would wind up saving a lot more lives, and getting our characters the time they need to muster a fleet and go in to kick ass and take names.

"Hey guys! They're not shielded. MAKE THEM BLEED!!!"

Oh. And how could I forget! The Last Starfighter. Just imagine throwing Gunstars into the mess - hot-rodded assault platforms with no blind spots and enough missiles to take out a several Basestars all on their lonesome.

So, thoughts?

[Rajvik]

For Marvel and DC i would suggest we use the 80's/90's animated series as opposed to the movies or the current TV series.

[Black Aeronaut]

I dunno. If we go with Marvel Movieverse, discounting the X-Men, they have it pretty well together.

But for DC, I agree on the idea of using the 90s and 00s animated shows.

Edit: Though definitely draw on the 90s animated series for the X--Men.

Although, here's a thought. Since the MCU treats X-Men like it is its own little universe, then why not? It's not like we saw anything else from Marvel in the animated series like Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, or Iron Man.

[Mamorien]

Since the MCU treats X-Men like it is its own little universe, then why not? It's not like we saw anything else from Marvel in the animated series like Spiderman, the Fantastic Four, or Iron Man.

Are you sure about that? I have a vague memory of several non-mutant cameos during the animated series' take on the Dark Phoenix saga, specifically (in this context) Spider-Man's spider-sense going completely ballistic. (No FF or Shellhead, but I also seem to recall Dr. Strange reacting to the psychic uproar and its aetheric echoes.)

[Black Aeronaut]

If they really were no more than cameo appearances, then we can work around them.  Besides, we knew going into this that things weren't gonna message up perfectly.  In-sorry, this will be noticed, but ultimately nothing to cry over.

And let's be honest with ourselves here; do we REALLY want to deal with having five or six versions of Wolverine running around?  As awesome as that might seem, I'm not not willing to deal with that much angst all at once.