I spent my writing time today mostly working on the history of Exoworld's universe, starting with the project that resulted in creating the Icarus as a colony ship and getting to the arrival at Exile, though I still need to write the history for what happened since then.

How the History Works

One of the important points to make clear to audiences as they engage with Exoworld is that there are two histories: the actual one and the official one.

The actual history is important to understand because it is the justification for why the Exemplars aren't a good and noble faction. There's some degree of that in the Exemplars' own official history, but they are not reliable narrators. When they admit their own fault, it's only to reinforce their own social goals.

I wanted to do something different than usual and stress that resource depletion wasn't the reason for leaving Earth. Rather, it's a prestige project carried out by corrupt elites who use it to turn scrutiny away from their own rapacious lifestyles and distract from their excesses and wars.

Now, resource depletion is a factor in some of these wars, but it's also not. By the time the Icarus is wrapping up construction, it's become clear to almost everyone that the ship is little more than a publicity stunt and a bread and circuses attempt to appease the masses.

Unfortunately, humanity's penchant for conflict has prevented people from having nice things.

The Icarus leaves with an almost-full contingent of passengers, most of whom are elites trying to get out while they still can. However, there are war refugees and lucky lottery winners among their ranks, since the goal for the United System government is to keep up the facade of being legitimate as long as they can.

Within a decade of the Departure, the solar system falls to pieces. The Icarus is not merely forgotten; there are no clear signals coming from Earth.

The crew faces a crisis when a hydrogen fuel tank ruptures, damaging several modules. The resulting fuel shortage means that the Icarus won't be able to stop when they reach Exile.

They wake scientists who are trusted to make decisions critical to the mission's success.

The scientists decide that the only way for the mission to succeed is to eject colonists from the damaged modules until the mass of the vessel has decreased enough to stop at its target.

Fearing a mutiny, the scientists tell the crew that the damaged modules wouldn't be able to reanimate their passengers. When the crew test this and call the scientists' bluff, a conflict arises.

Commandos woken from their slumber take the scientists' side. They massacre the original crew to the last man.

The first Exemplars take over the responsibility of the crew and begin spinning the myth that will become the Exemplars' official history.

Why Include Two Histories

That's the part that seems most interesting to me as an important point for discussion right now. One idea for the Exemplars is that they're the ideal Platonic society, and there are actually elements of the Republic that are being brought to play here. One is the idea of the divine lie, which is the fictitious history they create.

There's also an idea in Plato's work that an entire city should be wiped out and restarted from scratch if it becomes too corrupt. The Exemplars' actions against the original crew reflect this brutality and ruthlessness, though it's not quite as philosophically developed as it is in Plato.

I also draw the Exemplars' caste system from Plato's ideal Republic, though perhaps in a less clear way. The genetic alteration is part of the idea of the society brought forth by Plato's number, which has subtle nods like certain castes having a hard limit of 3600 members. The higher castes also cite a mystical belief in something akin to Plato's number that guides their decision-making process, but this is just a lie to cement their power.

I want to set out the "actual" history so that it's clear as day that the Exemplars are not "good guys" in any sense of the word. While there are certain individuals within their society that are devoid of guilt, in part because of the paternalism of its caste structure, the philosophy they draw upon is something that's possessed me ever since I read Popper's The Open Society and its Enemies. I was quite enamored with Plato after reading his work in my undergrad, but I could never reconcile myself to its heavily illiberal tendencies.

There should be no ambiguity that the Exemplars are evil, even if only in Arendt's banal sort of evil.

They're a playable faction, though, and I want to clarify that we do not find the vices of the Exemplars in every individual Exemplar. Exemplar PCs operate with a vision of divine purpose based on a mythical history built to create that purpose despite a bloody and tragic history. Many are decent as people and justify any action that they cannot conflate with their own sense of dignity and virtue as necessary for the survival of humanity.

However, it should never be fully possible to reconcile the willingness of the Exemplars to resort to force and deception with a strong moral code.

Factions

I wanted to talk a little more about the Originals.

We can split the Originals into three camps: descendants of the sleeping passengers, passengers who have woken up, and the offshoots of Exemplars who aren't welcome back in the fold.

The Originals don't have the crazy life extensions of the Exemplars, but they can expect to live a solid 120 years if not subject to any major hardship or killed by something. That's an ideal situation, and Exile offers few ideal situations.

Since colonization was 410 years ago, the vast majority of people are the natural descendants of the Originals who were first sent down to the planet. For those curious, the Spurned were technically there first, and the Exemplars who worked in the labs in Umbriel preceded even them, but the Exemplars started the calendar with the colonization to sever the connection between the pre-Departure world and Exile.

However, not all the passengers were sent down from the Icarus simultaneously. The last passengers arrived planet-side fifty years ago.

The distribution of passengers depended on their disposition, but most late arrivals wound up in Titania. Remembering the hardships of the last days on Earth, they are more tolerant of the Exemplars' influence and reinforce their narratives when they mingle with the people who might know better from experience.

Players choosing to play an Original can choose from the recent arrivals, Exile natives, or outcast Exemplars.

From a gameplay perspective, recent arrivals have the advantage of more life experience. They get free Expertise traits, but don't have the other skills. Although most recent arrivals are in Titania, this is not a hard and fast rule, and there are places where cryogenic facilities have been operating on the planet, waiting to restore life to people until one or another condition is met.

Exile natives have a free resource boost to represent the hardiness they have to develop to live on Exile. I'm torn on another mechanical boost to give them. They're streetwise more-so than book smart.

I'm torn on changing these terms to reflect the fact that some passengers came from rough-and-tumble backgrounds while others did not. Another idea I've had is to give the passengers access to things like cybernetics that aren't available on Exile. The mechanical implementation is entirely absent, and I'm focusing more on the writing for now.

Another option for the Originals is to play an outcast Exemplar.

The only Exemplars to go rogue on Exile are from the Surveyor caste. This is fitting, because they're actually throwbacks to Original genetic templates rather than a product of the centuries of tinkering other modern Exemplars underwent.

They're something like Exemplar-lite characters. Players choosing the background get access to the free Exemplar traits, but otherwise they handle like ordinary Originals.

They get some penalties for this, however, most obviously being that they're going to face discrimination at the hands of real Exemplars and distrust from anyone who suspects them of being an Exemplar agent.

Wrapping Up

I want to create as many little loci for conflict and interesting stories as possible in Exoworld. The secret here is to make sure that the character biographies don't interfere with storytelling down the road. It's very simple to create characters that are rich and meaningful, but hard to plan for how that pans out with a half-dozen people sitting around the table and trying to make things work.

My background with Degenesis is one reason I'm keeping the game to four factions, of whom three of which are major and one of which is just an odd newcomer. Even though Degenesis was a setting where people could cooperate regardless of background and the setting's creator kept wading in to tell people that the factions really could cooperate when it fit their interests and characters shouldn't feel beholden to be stereotypes, the perception that each of the factions was a monolith in the universe with no room for compromise was really strong.