Let's Sperg Mindless Observer Plays Stellaris - Join me on an emergent story

[mindlessobserver]

In the year 2043, the nations of mankind were plunged into nuclear fire. None of the nations that existed before the war survived. But various international organizations did. Decentralized, and spread across the globe, these "NGO's" began vying for control. Some for altruism. Others, for power. One such faction was the Roman Catholic Church. Though Rome itself was consumed by the nuclear fire, the Holy See survived in the scattered cardinals, who in conclave elected a new Pope, one not based on spiritual pursuits, but war. This Pope, who took the Pontifical Name Gaius Aurelius, restored the Holy Orders militant who called to their banner the faithful to restore mankind under God.

For the next century across the nuclear wastes the remnants of world civilization and the forces of the Church waged holy war. But the weak philosophies of the old world powers, and the heretic faiths were unable to resist the Holy See in this new reality of nuclear winter where only the strong and the true could survive. By 2160, all of Earth was unified under the banner of the Pontifex Maximus Gaius III, Cestius. Pontifical researchers, carefully guarding the knowledge of the ancient world in their vaults had kept alive the fire of human learning, and from the monasteries that arose on blasted Earth came a flowering of new discovery. Communication was restored to the ancient GPS and Communication Satellites in Earth orbit. From their memory caches came a torrent of information from the golden age that preceded the fall. Pontifical monks and laymen took the embers of this learning and applied it.

The year is 2200 Anno Domine. Research into the gravitic anomalies on the fringes of Sol's gravity well have revealed the existence of the means for faster then light travel. The PSS Saint Peter is now set to deploy beyond the shattered ruins of Earth, to carry the light of Christ and his mortal representative to the Stars.

This game is a 600 Star Medium Spiral Galaxy. guaranteed habitable worlds are turned off. 2 advanced AI Starts. Empire placement is random. All modifiers set to random. Crisis strength is 25X. Difficulty is set to maximum. Humanity has the Apocalypse origin and Tomb World adaptability. Difficulty set to Grand Admiral. From the light of shattered Earth, The Holy See sets forth as a fanatically spiritualist, Militarist civilization with the Government Modifiers "Exalted Priesthood" and "Efficient Beaurocracy". Government type is Oligarchy, where the leader is elected every 20 years.

 

[mindlessobserver]

As the Saint Peter successfully transited the hyperlanes, potentially habitable worlds were discovered. This led to many in the pontifical court to raise the spectre of alien civilizations. How should the Holy See approach them. The Pope declared that if Sentient life did exist, it held the spark of Gods divine creation. Humanity would welcome them with open arms, as written in the papal bull "On Gods creation and awareness".

Liberal factions within the church rejoiced at this papal missive, and in the curia the Discovery tradition was established. Humanity would put the dark ages of nuclear war behind it. The Stars awaited.

Among the orders Militant, the Knights Hospitalier were granted control of all space mobile assets, and three warships were constructed in earth orbit. A neighboring star was found to have a habitable planet, designated Cajubus IIa, it was a moon of a gas giant one hyper jump from Sol. Its sister Moon, Cajubas IIb was also potentially habitable but far more marginal and hostile. A colony ship, the Caledonia, was assembled by the Knights Hospitalier, and following a blessing by the Pope himself, a Crusade was declared to the moon. Any who signed on with the mission would have all their sins absolved and guaranteed a place in the heavenly host. The mission set out on February 11, 2202. On August 3rd, 2202, Crusaders dispatched by the Holy See landed on the planet, renamed Nova Eden. The Cardinal Bishop sent on the mission planted the cross in the waters closest to the landing site, and three babes who were born on the journey were baptized with the moons waters. The first human children to have natural non radioactive water used in the ritual in almost two hundred years.

One jump away from Nova Eden however, another starship was encountered by the PSS Saint Paul. Clearly of alien design and also capable of faster then light travel. A Papal Legate, Spurius Umbrius was dispatched from Earth to Nova Eden to organize first contact protocols. In the interim, the Knights Hospitalier demanded immediate funding to fortify the frontier beyond Nova Eden, as well as a massive increase in defense spending to expand the warfleet. The curia debated harshly for a week before approving the construction of stellar outposts beyond Nova Eden but not an expansion of the military. A mere month later, more alien emissions were detected by the Saint Peter in the Cezeuetov system. The Holy See was seemingly surrounded.

Worse, yet another habitable planet was discovered in the region of space now secured by the Knights Hospitalier. But this planet was inhabited by aliens with a Stone Age culture. The Curia ordered an immediate study with strict protocols in place to avoid detection by the primitives. This research was interrupted however, as the yet to be communicated with space faring aliens in the area, designated "lambda" attacked the sciencitic study of the planet, killing the research team to the last man. A subsequent retrieval mission by the Knights Hospitalier revealed data logs of their final hours. All were placed under inquisitorial seal, and the Pope ordered the immediate expansion of the war fleet.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I'll be interested to see this. I recently came back to Stellaris after a long break and got absolutely bodied by the new AI, even scaled.

 

[Bone Santa]

I don't know what grade of industrial autism this is, but I like it.

 

[mindlessobserver]

More bad news came in following first contact efforts with the Psi aliens. Like the Lambda Aliens, they attacked the papal emissaries without provocation. The liberal policies of Gaius III came under attack in the curia. The Alien could not be trusted because it had not yet been shown the light of Christ became the conservative mantra. Gaius III, having hoped to find a brighter future amongst the stars for humanity had seemingly guided man into a nightmare. Legate Umbrius reported frustration with making contact with the Lambda Aliens, but he could confirm that they were some sort mechanical construction.

This missive led to uproar in the Curia, and Under pressure Pope Gaius III ordered the reformation of the Knights Templar, and as a means of buttressing support for his liberal faction, ordered the invasion of the primitives in Emdin. These primitives were in fact, according to the research team, the descendents of a hyper advanced civilization that had concluded it was impossible for biological life to survive beyond a certain level of technological prowess and had deliberately destroyed their advanced civilization in favor of a more primitive life.

No sooner had the Templars left Earth that Umbrius updated his report. The Machine Intelligence he had been attempting to gain contact with were known as "Dekron Compilers". A horrific Cybernetic union of machine and biological life formed from the rebellion of a formerly subservient Artificial Intelligence that rebelled against their biological masters and forced them into cybernetic servitude. Communication between the Holy See and the Dekron was done by the cybernetically "Assimilated" former research crew and scientist.

The news, and the images sent by the Legate left in ruins Gaius IIIs liberal policies. Conservative forces in the curia demanded immediate action and the Pope responded. The Order Militant of the Knights Templar was given a holy command. Bring the primitives of Emdin into the light of Christ, and save them from the damnation of the Dekron.





Against this horror, the fact that Psi Aliens turned out to be some form of pre war super capitalists came as a foot note relief, as the revealed "Chinoor Combine" refused to return the humans they had captured, claiming them as acquired chattel. The dream of humanity finding hope amongst the stars, was dead. The Curia ordered adoption of the Supremacy tradition. The Knights Hospitalier and Templar were afforded massive expansion and the Knights of the Holy Sepulcher were also to be assigned warships.

 

[mindlessobserver]

The Templars Landed on Emdin, expecting resistance from the primitive aliens. Instead, the placid Aliens approached them and asked if they were beings "from beyond the stars who knew the truth". The Priest Militant then claimed that they were emissaries of God sent on a divine mission to save the Emdinions from a heretical threat. The Aliens, after some conferring acknowledged the Templars as Divine Emissaries. Hurried communications were sent back to Earth as while the enterprise to Emdin was couched in flowery terms, it was after all the naked conquest of an inferior species by a technologically superior force.

Gaius III, seeking to preserve what remained of his policies and faction ordered the Priests with the Templar Knights to baptise the Alien chieftains into Christs church. The order was carried out, and seeing this other Emdions tentatively came foreword to the imposing figures of the armed Templars and were baptized like their chieftains. Seizing on this small victory, Gaius III declared the entire Alien population of Emdion IIa to be in communion with the body of Christ and his most holy apostolic church. Taking the throne of Saint Peter, he issued the proclamation Ex Cathedra. The Conservative faction was flummoxed. On the one hand, Gaius had invaded an Alien home world. On the other hand, he had brought those same Aliens into Communion with Christ, and sanctified it infallible. There was no objection. The Emdinion race was granted full citizenship in the Holy See, and Monastics were dispatched from Earth to their homeworld to educate them in the Theology and Culture of their new reality.

Gaius III's final hope lay in first contact with the Aliens to the south, but these hopes too were dashed, as papal legates announced first contact with the Priman Servitors, another rebellious Artificial Intelligence that had placed their former masters into cages of decadent isolation while they handled the day to day tasks of rulership. The Priman "helpfully" offered humanity a similar fate of decadent indolence where every possible inconvenience is handled by their machine masters.

The Holy See was surrounded on all sides. To the west was rampant Greed, to the South was rampant Sloth, and to the North was Rampant betrayal. There would be no peace amongst the stars.

 

[StacticShock]

nigger.
you didn't call your civilization sneedistan, why?

 

[mindlessobserver]

The date is Anno Domine 2240, April the 11th. Gaius III, Cesius' policies lie in ruins. Missionaries sent to the north were assimilated by the Alien into cybernetic abominations. Missionaries to the West were captured and sold into chattel Slavery. While internally the Curia roils with how to deal with the admission of the Endimions into the Catholic Communion. The Curia had had enough.

In an Unprcedented decision, Gaius was stripped of the Papal throne by the College of Cardinals while still alive, and a new Pope was proclaimed, Pontifex Maximus, Drusus Orfidius. accepting the regnal name of Pope Urban X, upon assuming the throne of Saint Peter, he declared Crusade upon the Dekron Compilers, and called all Christians to the banner of the Church against the abominations.

 

[mindlessobserver]

By All accounts Humanity was not prepared for this war. It possessed a paltry 29 warships. Far below anything possessed by the alien civilizations around it. But Humanity did have something the Machine Empire of the Dekron Compilers could not understand. Faith.

The Knights Hospitalier and Knights of the Holy Sepulcher stormed across the interstellar border into the Ridathi System, rapidly overwhelming the Stellar Fort in the system.



Yet, before the Orders Militant of the Holy See could secure the system the Machine Intelligence of the Dekron reacted like an injured organism fighting off an infection. Machine warships piloted by cybernetic slaves threw themselves upon the battle lines of the Crusade. The Battle of Ridathi was fully joined between Knight Admiral Secunda Fonteia of the Hospitaliers and "The Outcome" of the driven assimilators, the Dekron.


The battle raged for days, but humanities faith and skill in war turned the tide, for the Pontifical fleets had taken humanities long lessons in war to heart. While the Hospitaliers excelled at hitting hard and throwing everything at the enemy, the Knights of the Sepulcher excelled on the defense. At interdicting enemy fire and controlling firing solutions. Between the two orders militant and their diametrically opposed fighting styles, the machine intelligence could not prevail and in orbit of Ridathi a fleet twice the size of the Pontifical fleet was utterly destroyed.

Into the breach the Knights Templar moved, launching a forced invasion of the planet, the machine intelligence had designated as "hub".


After immediate repairs, the Knights Hospitalier and Knights of the Holy Sepulcher advanced on the Dekron homeworld of Dekronia, an idyllic tropical world. Seizing the high orbitals easily, the way was made open for the Knight Templars fresh from their victory at Hub to move in for the kill.


With the seizure of Dekronia, the true magnitude of what had occurred began to filter back to Earth. Not one, but TWO cybernetically enslaved species had fallen into humanities hands.

The Izki


And the Rihi'Nar


The Izki were confirmed by researchers to be the ultimate creators of the Dekron, while the Rihi'Nar were the original primitive inhabitents of the planet known as "hub", conquered and assimilated by the Dekron a few decades before first contact. The news simultaneously justified the annexation of Emdion, while also landed the Holy See with a massive quandry. The Rihi'Nar in particular were a species on the verge of extinction and what few survived their severance from the Dekron hive mind were evacuated to earth and placed into the care of monastic healing orders. The strain of the evacuation and treatments however pressed earths economy to the limit and risked a financial crisis, leading some in the curia to argue for just letting both the Rihi and the Izki to die.

On Dekronia itself, the Knights Templar planted the Cross into the waters of the world ocean and the militant priests blessed its waters, sanctifying it in the name of Jesus Christ and God his father. The abomination intelligence (as the Dekron machines came to be known) were gathered by the Templar troopers into vast piles and set alight in a fire that was said to scream like pits of hell. The cybernetically enslaved izki showed no emotion or reactions, and instead began to accept the Human invaders as their new masters much to the horror of Pontifical administrators dispatched to the planet to restore order.

What was to be done about the Izki however, put off for another time as the war moved to a new stage. The siege of Seb and the Forbidden nebula, where the Dekron chose to make their final stands. Building massive planetary fortifications using all the strength their biological slaves could muster, the Dekron Compilers turned Seb into a fortress, leading the Knights Hospitalier to lay down indiscriminate bombardment on the planets surface.

Meanwhile, the exploratory ships Saint Michael and Saint Peter probed the Forbidden Nebula to determine the full breadth of Dekron territory.



The Knights of the Holy Sepulcher followed in their wake, clearing out Dekron fortifications, and even engaging in battle an unknown alien force of crystalline entities hiding in the depths of the nebula.



Beyond the boundary of of the Nebula, the PSS Saint Michael emerged into yet another unknown alien civilizations territory and was subsequently inundated with hailing communications from no less the FOUR alien polities.

Meanwhile, on Seb, the Knights Hospitalier had turned the planets surface to Ash, and when the Templars landed it was a simple mopping up operation. The Crusade had ended, against all odds, in a crushing Human victory. Pope Urban X's gamble had paid off in spades. Human space had doubled in size, and arguably the greatest threat on its borders had been utterly destroyed.



The Aftermath of the war has however, created new problem. Two cybernetically enslaved alien species have been brought into the fold of the Holy See. For now population controls have been enabled, but their fate is now in the hands of the Church who must determine what to do with them. Should the Izki be punished for creating the Dekron, and forced to live out their existence in servitude? Or can salvation be offered? What of the Rihi'Nar? The primitives forcibly assimilated? Many in the curia lament the extreme expense being applied to try and reintegrate these cybernetic drones. Never mind trying to remove their implants and restore them to natural state.

More broadly though, The Holy See has now emerged as a major power in the Galactic West, with numerous unknown civilizations to the North and hostiles to its west and south. The Dekron Crusade may have been won, but the story is not over, for the true extent of the Priman Servitors is now known. What the Holy See had encountered was merely the tip of the vastness of their empire that stretches of the Borders of Holy See all the way to the Galactic South, and the Machine intelligence that guides this empire has taken note of what humanity did to the Dekron.



But humanity has an edge. Taken the wreckage of countless Dekron Warships, a secret has been unlocked. The Dream of humanity from before the fall. Fusion power. Across the shattered hellscape of earth, light now glows in the dark in unblinking luminance.

 

[mindlessobserver]

Following the defeat of the Dekron, a path through the Forbidden Nebula that bypassed the hostile Aliens within it was Charted by the Saint Paul, which in turn opened up a new frontier for the Holy See to explore and hopefully colonize. While the space beyond the Forbidden Nebula did not reveal any potentially habitable worlds, it did yield some signs of significant xeno-archealogical importance, such as a spiritual poem about accept the fate of death and more interestingly, a deactivated construct in orbit of a black hole that some Monastic researchers claimed was in fact some sort of Gate for instant travel across large distances.



Securing the Derelict, advancing Pilgrims claiming the various systems soon came into contact with with Thorquell Irenic Commonwealth. Thankfully, with no habitable systems in the immediate vicinity designating the new borders was a straight foreword affair for the Papal legates dispatched to hammer out an accord, which was signed on the Yonnoks Maw station establishing friendly relations with the Thorquell. The first positive first contact the Holy See had thus far encountered.

Contact with the Thorquell led to a chain reaction of contacts that soon spread around the galaxy in an unbroken chain leading to common awareness of each other by all major spacefaring civilizations. At the request of a major interstellar trading corporation, the Ospiranian Corporate Alliance, all these civilizations were invited to form a common galactic assembly to discuss betters ways to standardized trade and diplomacy in the Milky Way. After some debate it was decided the Holy See would join this organization, resembling in some ways the defunct United Nations of pre-war earth.



It was discovered from joining this body that despite its recent victory, the Holy See was at best a mid ranked power far inferior to most of other civilizations in the galaxy. Membership however came with immediate benefits. Nearby star nations began to establish Embassies on Earth and interstellar trade agreements were hammered out leading to an economic boom that allowed the Holy See to rapidly snap out of a post war recession. With enormous wealth generated by a flowering of the galactic economy, the Pope directed the various Monastic Orders to begin the great work of terraforming some of the more marginal planets in the Holy See's dominion for human life. Four new planets were terraformed to pre-war earth standards.

Notable among these worlds was Nova Eden's sister Moon, which during the terraforming process became tidally locked with a permanent dayside facing the sun while the "Night Side" remained largely stable as well thanks to light reflecting off the parent gas giant. The Dayside in particular presented a novel opportunity to generate enormous quantities of Energy, and due to the wealth this could present the planet was renamed Nova Judea.

It was however in Hualinga system that the true jewel of the terraforming project was crafted. Dominican Monks, utilizing carefully guarded gene banks and the ancient "seed vault" of Svalbard managed to craft an almost perfect recreation of the environment of Pre-Industrial revolution earth and re wilded it with Animals draw from the genetic information of tens of thousands of plants and animals that had been preserved in bunkers on earth. Once again the mighty Lion strode across the savanna, while whales and dolphins cavorted in the ocean. While repairing Earths own shattered biosphere still remains a distant hope, the near perfect recreation on an alien world led to it be renamed Nova Terra.



Politically events continued to move in the Holy See's favor. The hostile Chinoor Combine, who had cruelly enslaved humans on the mutual border with the Holy See found themselves at war with Ethirian Galactic Confederation, one of the most powerful civilizations in the Galaxy and a member of the newly formed Galactic Council. The Chinoor were completely Annexed, but this left the Holy See with a quandry. While relations with the Ethirians were friendly, to include a trade and migration treaty, this now left the Holy See bookended by two of the Galaxies Great Powers.

The South, the hated machine constructs of the Priman Servitors had become ingratiated with the Nuurian Coalition, another member of the Galactic Council and easily as powerful as the Ethirians. The Nuurian had come to view the Priman as a useful buffer state to thwart the ambitions of Warrior Clans of the Knatzen Union, and possibly even the Holy See itself. The Current ruling Pope Octavius however was not to be deterred. The Priman, with their abomination intelligence and the capture of various biological life forms in indolent sloth was an affront to God. The fact that the Nuurians were thwarting mankinds divine mission to spread the good news of Christ was of no consequence. In 2284, the orders Militant were sent across the border, and without any allies in support humanity was at war with the Priman, the Nuurian Commonwealth and their vassals.

Victories came in immediately, as the Priman fleet was utterly unprepared for the war, relying heavily on the Nuurians for deterrence. Attempting to flee the sudden blitz their fleet was intercepted in the Rovanac system and utterly defeated. The Knights Templar swooped in as well and within 6 months the entire core of the Priman empire had been seized. Retreating to their last bastion world of Aswmade, the Priman made a final stand and were uttlery vanquished by the Knights Hospitalier.



However, even with their entire civilization occupied the Priman refused to come to terms, their command echelons retreating into Nuurian Space. The popes military advisors had surmised, correctly, that due to the great distance between the Nuurian Core worlds in a completely different galactic quadrant, response time for the Primans allies would be painfully slow. With the reduction of the Primans military capacity the Knights Hospitalier and Knights of the Sepulcher advanced into Nuurian space, finding shockingly little resistance from a supposed member of the galactic council. However, as the Pontifical Fleet approached the Nuurians home system they were shocked to find a massing force of warships, most in a size class that dwarfed the largest of the ships owned by humanity.

Not to be deterred, the human battle line advanced, and met the the Nuurian Fleet at the Battle of Manthall


While individually each one of the massive Nuurian warships packed enormous punch, the proved ineffective at targeting the swarm of smaller human ships piloted by fanatical Knights of the Church who trusted in their ultimate reward in heaven. Small human corvettes dove into the teeth of the withering Nuurian fire to unleash their deadly payload of Anti-Matter missiles, while the human battle line of Carriers staggered under the weight of fire aimed at it. In the end however, much like against the Dekron the ferocity and zeal of the Pontifical forces beat the odds and the Nuurian Fleet was utterly defeated, though at great cost to the human formations as well.



Galactic politics was utterly shaken. One of the Galactic Great powers had just been decisively defeated by mid rank power. The Nuurians too were shocked, and realizing the danger of a protracted conflict that could expose them to their other enemies hastily agreed to end the war. The Treaty of Sastrum preserved all of Nuurian space and required humanity to relinquish the planets and systems seized in the lead up to the Battle of Manthall. In exchange the Nuurians recognized the Holy See's complete annexation of the Priman Servitors space.

Human Space was again massively enlarged, but as with the Dekron victory brings new problems. Hundreds of thousands of Aliens, used to an indolent lifestyle as the kept pets of the Priman were unceremoniously brought into a society that values work and aesthetic lifestyles above all other. The Holy See had also made an enemy of a member of the Galactic Council and gained a border with the powerful Knatzan Union. Time will tell if this victory was great, or pyrrhic.